Meeting at Infinity by John Brunner Page B

chain, and Curdy saw how things were to be arranged.
    The pugs paid out the chain in front of the line of captives. Attached to this chain at intervals were shorter chains each terminating in an oval metal ring. The pugs picked up the rings one by one, seized the right wrists of the captives, and snicked the rings on like handcuffs. Curdy was the last to be treated; when the others had been secured, the man with the gun motioned him into line, and he submitted, seething. There were a couple of empty rings still; as the line of captives was herded across the yard, with the two pugs hauling on the front end of the chain, these rings clanked on the ground behind Curdy like insane tambourines.
    On the opposite side of the yard was a travolator leading into a lighted tunnel. There was no hint where it might lead. As Curdy’s group approached, another group was being loaded on. The chain binding them was locked on to a hook on a belt moving at the same speed as the travolator, and theyhad to go with it like a team playing pop-the-whip, staggering as they were dragged forward.
    What in Tacket’s name had driven Lyken—Lyken of all the merchant princes—to such desperate measures? Curdy’s head spun as much with the problem as with the aftereffects of the blow he had received.
    His group was just about to be hooked on to the conveyer belt and dragged on to the travolator, when a man to whom the pugs gave respectful salutes came out from behind one of the empty paddy wagons. With him were two more pugs, straggling to control a wide-eyed man in a brown coverup, who shook and struggled, uttering little moaning cries.
    “Hook this one on with the others,” ordered the newcomer, his voice sounding tired and strained. He jerked a thumb at the man in the brown coverup. The pugs grinned and nodded. In a moment, their struggling victim was chained behind Curdy, and the whole group was being snatched forward on to the travolator. Dimly, there was a sarcastic remark from the newcomer.
    “You’re getting where you asked to be taken, you fool!”
    Curdy had visions of the wide-eyed man causing trouble on the travolator, and as soon as they were on it and steady on their feet, he turned to him and prepared to warn him to keep still. But a shock of recognition prevented him.
    “But—but you’re the man who spoke to Lyken outside The Market at noon!”
    The other didn’t seem to hear. Instead of struggling and pulling on his chain as Curdy had feared, however, he began to curse. It discomforted Curdy to hear such fluent obscenity in an accent with status to it. Some of the other captives, who seemed to have been shocked into numb acquiescence by the fate that had overtaken them, half-turned and looked incuriously back.
    The travolator began to spiral upwards at a steep angle, so that they almost slid backwards on its rough surface. Theman behind Curdy stopped cursing and began to shout in a high, hysterical tone.
    “Do you know what’s happening to you? I’ll tell you! A bastard called Lyken wants us for cannon fodder! They’re throwing him out of his franchise, and it’s more than time—he’s a cheating lying filthy Tacket-loving scoundrel who lies and smiles and isn’t fit to
breathe!
”
    Someone higher up the line cried out in an anguished voice. Curdy felt fear go through him like a frozen wind.
    “I want to get hold of Lyken and pull off his fingers!” The man behind him screamed. “I want to put oil on his beard and hear him yell while it burns off his face! I want to—”
    “Shut him up, can’t you?” bellowed a voice from higher up. Curdy gulped. The raw savagery in his neighbor’s tone was churning his guts. He hesitated. Then he bunched his fist.
    “If you don’t stop it,” he said in his roughest manner, “I’ll break your nose for you.”
    The man stopped, crouching a little against the rise of the travolator, and stared at Curdy with tear-bright eyes. “I’m Luis Nevada,” he said inanely, in a voice