Read Logan's Run for Free Online Page B

positions.
    Logan sprawled the upper part of his body off the bed and hit the leg releases. He rolled from the Table as it mindlessly attacked its own vitals.
    It died, shrieking, as sparks showered from the gutted machine.
    Logan considered his next move. Without another punch-key, which Doc apparently was to supply, his run was over. And it wouldn’t take a mouth like Doc long to spread the word: Sandman. The trail would end before it began.
    He kicked the back door open and found himself in a dank warren of intersecting hallways. The moaning cry of the fire galleries drifted up to him, mixed with the baked desert smell of dreamdust from the halluciomills.
    Something iced out of the gray half-darkness, knocking the Gun from his grasp. A glacier numbness chilled his arm from hand to elbow.
    Popsickle!
    Logan spun into a fighting crouch to face the dim white figure coming at him with the refrigerated police billy held at waist level. Doc, in for the kill.
    One blow to the chest and Logan’s body would be a sea of ice crystals, freezing heart action, stopping the breath in his throat. The Gun lay on the floor rimed with frost.
    He kept his eyes locked on the short smoke-colored stick in Doc’s practiced hand. The popsickle slashed air as Doc lunged past him. Logan twisted and fell to one knee in the classic Omnite attack position. His left elbow drove into Doc’s groin. With a soundless, choked scream, Doc slammed the wall, bouncing off into Logan’s knee, which caught him with a killing spinal blow.
    Logan swore bitterly, stripping the dead man’s pockets. I should have handled this without killing him, he thought. Now where’s the next key? Has the girl got it? And where is she? Probably hidden somewhere in the Arcade labyrinth.
    Logan retrieved the moist Gun, straightening to a sound in the next room. He moved carefully to the door, easing it open.
    Holly was inside, against the far wall, a medical knife poised at her breast. Her terror-glazed eyes were fixed on the Gun. As Logan advanced toward her she drove the blade into her chest.
    The world ended abruptly for Holly 13.
    Logan put away his weapon.
    “Doyle…Doyle…is that you?” A drugged voice.
    Logan stepped through an alum-mesh curtain. The cramped room reeked of anesthetic. A dark-haired girl, nude to the waist, was rising groggily from a pneumocot.
    She blinked dreamily at Logan. “It’s me— Jessica ,” she said; her fingers tentatively explored the new planes of her face.
    A runner, thought Logan. Her hand is blinking. But why does she think I’m Doyle? And did she get the “Key. Do you have a punchkey?” he asked.
    “Doyle…you don’t look like my brother anymore. You don’t even sound the same. They’ve changed us.”
    So that was it: the girl was Doyle’s sister. He must have told her to meet him here. “Listen,” said Logan, “do you have the next key?”
    She was fully awake now, slipping into her blouse. He saw her remove a silver object from one pocket. Logan took it from her. A mazekey.
    “Did Doc give you any instructions?”
    “Yes. He told me—us—to use a branch tunnel under Arcade. I know where it is.”
    “All right then. Let’s go.”
    He followed her to a slideway. The plunged down into jeweled darkness. At the off ramp he took her hand. They ran along the maze platform.
    The maze. A million miles of tunnel, a veining of expressways serving the continents, interlinking Chicago with New York, Detroit with New Alaska, London with Lower Australia—a multitude of black-steel beetles burrowing the subterranean depths at fantastic speeds.
    Logan stabbed the mazekey into a callbox at the edge of the platform.
    A distant brass -humming along the tunnels, a rocketing rush of deep-earth winds; the mazecar blazed out of darkness and socked into the boarding slot.
    They climbed in. The hatch slid closed. The seats locked.
    “Destination?” asked the car.
    Jessica said, “Sanctuary.”
    The mazecar surged into fluid