Read Between Planets for Free Online Page B

what?”
    “Don’t try to jump me. You might hurry me and then you might get hurt—bad.” The man appeared to go back to sleep.
    Don slumped into apathy. Even if he did manage to jump this one, slug him maybe, there were three more out front. And suppose he got away from them? A strange city, where they had everything organized, everything under control—where would he run to ?
    Once he had come across the stable cat playing with a mouse. He had watched for a moment, fascinated even though his sympathies were with the mouse, before he had stepped forward and put the poor beastie out of its misery. The cat had never once let the mouse scamper further than pounce range. Now he was the mouse—
    “Up you come!”
    Don jumped to his feet, startled and having trouble placing himself. “I wish I had your easy conscience,” the guard said admiringly. “It’s a real gift to be able to catch forty winks any time. Come on; the boss wants you.”
    Don preceded him back into the living room; there was no one there but the mate of the man who had guarded him. Don turned and said, “Where is Dr. Jefferson?”
    “Never mind,” his guard replied. “The lieutenant hates to be kept waiting.” He started on out the door.
    Don hung back. The second guard casually took him by the arm; he felt a stabbing pain clear to his shoulder and went along.
    Outside they had a manually-operated car larger than the robot cabs. The second guard slipped into the driver’s seat; the other urged Don into the passenger compartment. There he sat down and started to turn—and found that he could not. He was unable even to raise his hands. Any attempt to move, to do anything other than sit and breathe, felt like struggling against the weight of too many blankets. “Take it easy,” the guard advised. “You can pull a ligament fighting that field. And it does not do any good.”
    Don had to prove to himself that the man was right. Whatever the invisible bonds were, the harder he strained against them the tighter they bound him. On the other hand when he relaxed and rested he could not even feel them. “Where are you taking me?” he demanded.
    “Don’t you know? The city I.B.I. office, of course.”
    “What for? I haven’t done anything!”
    “In that case, you won’t have to stay long.”
    The car pulled up inside a large garaging room; the three got out and waited in front of a door; Don had a feeling that they were being looked over. Shortly the door opened; they went inside.
    The place had the odor of bureaucracy. They went down a long corridor past endless offices filled with clerks, desks, transtypers, filing machines, whirring card sorters. A lift bounced them to another level; they went on through more corridors and stopped at an office door. “Inside,” said the first guard. Don went in; the door slid shut behind him with the guards outside.
    “Sit down, Don.” It was the leader of the group of four, now in the uniform of security officer and seated at a horseshoe desk.
    Don said, “Where is Dr. Jefferson? What did you do with him?”
    “Sit down, I said.” Don did not move; the lieutenant went on, “Why make it hard for yourself? You know where you are; you know that I could have you restrained in any way that suited me—some of them quite unpleasant. Will you sit down, please, and save us both trouble?”
    Don sat down and immediately said, “I want to see a lawyer.”
    The lieutenant shook his head slowly, looking like a tired and gentle school teacher. “Young fellow, you’ve been reading too many romantic novels. Now if you had studied the dynamics of history instead, you would realize that the logic of legalism alternates with the logic of force in a pattern dependent on the characteristics of the culture. Each culture evokes its own basic logic. You follow me?”
    Don hesitated; the other went on, “No matter. The point is, your request for a lawyer comes about two hundred years too late to be meaningful. The