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The opening · free to read
Branded an outlaw by the ISP, hated and feared as a mutant, Clyde Vickers stalked his quarry in impotent rage. His kind, it seemed, was always wanted for the dirty work....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Clyde Vickers shuffled awkwardly down the gangplank. After two years on Jupiter he felt buoyant as a toy balloon in the mild gravity of Earth's satellite. Every step he expected to go sailing over the heads of the other passengers--up, up into the vast booming reaches of Luna City's airlock.
The line jammed, came to a fuming stop. Vickers found himself wedged between a woman who had boarded the liner at Mars and a bearded Plutonian explorer. He craned his neck, peering over their heads to see what had caused the bottleneck.
An officer of the ISP, in a blue uniform, was standing at the foot of the gangplank, examining passports. Vickers cursed under his breath.
"Damn them," he thought, "damn them."
Behind him, the black spaceliner made sudden pistol-like reports as it expanded in the warm air. It had brought some of the cold of outer space along with it, and hoar frost stood out on its sides a foot thick. It was rapidly exhausting the heat in the airlock. Vickers shivered as the cold struck through his ill-fitting gray suit.
"Papers," the ISP man said and held out his hand.
With a start Vickers realized that he had reached the end of the gangplank. The ISP man took one look at Vickers' little green book and his face hardened.
"Parolee!" he said.
There were whispers from the crowd. A little boy said: "What's he done, momma? What's he done?"
"Hush!" she bade him.
Vickers gave no sign that he'd heard.
"Two-time loser, eh?" the ISP man went on and ran his eyes over Vickers. He saw a tall man with huge shoulders, the muscle bulging the cheap gray cloth--muscle that could be acquired only in the killing gravity of Jupiter's penal mines. Then he saw Vickers' eyes, and he looked startled.
Vickers had his nictitating lids lowered; his eyes seemed almost normal. Almost but not quite!
"What the devil!" the ISP man wet his lips. "Vickers! By God, I should have recognized the name. Vickers, eh?" He seemed about to say more, then changed his mind. "Move along. You're holding up the line."
"My passport."
"Pick it up at the parole board. If you don't report there in twenty-four hours, you'll be picked up yourself and shipped back to Jupiter. You're a two-time loser, Vickers; you can't afford to get into trouble again."
Vickers regarded him with open dislike, then turned on his heel, started across the spaceport at a cautious shuffle.
Freedom!
He couldn't leave the moon. He had to accept whatever work the parole board secured for him--more than likely some stinking job deep in the moon pits. He must report for a check-up and a psycho-therapeutic treatment every four weeks. He couldn't marry or hold property or change jobs.
And if he fell from grace again, it meant sterilization and a life sentence on Jupiter.
Freedom. What the hell had he to look forward to?
All his life Vickers had been lonely. His parents, horrified at having produced a monstrosity, had placed him in a home and washed their hands of him.
Not that Vickers' abnormality was disfiguring or particularly noticeable even--you had to look closely at his eyes to recognize the nictitating lids--but he was a freak, a mutant, and the sight of him had been a constant reminder of their shame.
At the home, Vickers' playmates had quickly discovered his queerness and had taunted him about it with the cruelty of children. His attempts at friendship were met with rebuffs. He might have been able to adjust but he was never allowed to forget that he was different.
Later when the peculiar power of his eyes became known, he was feared a little, resented and cordially hated. Vickers was forced in on himself. He built a shell, a hard flippant armor against the senseless antagonism he met everywhere.
In spite of hysterical predictions and a flood of stories in the science-fiction magazines, the Atomic Age had not ushered in a wave of mutants--at least not radical mutants. Vickers was practically unique.
And alone.
Nevertheless Vickers experienced an odd tingling excitement as he emerged from the lock into Luna City. Beneath his thick layers of protective indifference, he was eager as a boy, friendly, sensitive. A starved gregariousness looked out of his eyes in unguarded moments.
He stood with his back to the wall of an export firm, breathing deeply of the warm, artificially earth-scented air. Through the soles of his feet he could feel the pavement vibrating faintly, as deep inside the bowels of the moon, the mechanical mining worms gnawed out the ore, chewed it, digested it, spat it out as metal ingots.
The voice of the city rolled over him, deafened him. His eyes were bewildered at the crowds jamming the pavement. His pulse leaped. He was like a blind man who has just had his sight restored.
Someone said: "Hello, Vickers," and struck him on the shoulder. "Glad to see you out."
Vickers brought his eyes down. He stared at the man who had addressed him. The look of exaltation slowly faded from his face to be replaced by a puzzled frown.
"I don't know you."
"Oh, come now, surely you recognize me." The man was as big as Vickers, exactly, and the same build. He was clad in a shabby gray suit. There was something tantalizingly familiar about him. Vickers wrinkled his forehead in concentration.
"I must remember that," said the man, and wrinkled his forehead exactly like Vickers.
They were standing in a doorway out of the stream of pedestrians. Suddenly Vickers' mouth fell open. He stared at the man in startled disbelief.
It was himself!
The resemblance was too perfect. The same close-cropped black hair and Jupiter-enlarged muscles. The same short, straight nose, wide, thin-lipped mouth, square jaw. Even the same transparent inner lids lowered over pale gray eyes. It was like looking into a mirror.
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