Logan's Run Read Free Page A

aside a thin garment of spun gauze.
    How many times have I come to a place like this? he asked himself. To a lonely, empty house of glass.
    Glass all around them. Glass walls and ceilings and floors. The bed, glass fiber. The chairs and tables, glass. The building was one vast transparent globe, shot periodically with colored lights.
    Each room was equipped to illumine itself at irregular intervals, but it was impossible to determine just when a room would flare into brightness. Caught in the act of lovemaking, a couple would suddenly find themselves tangled in a wash of silver, or gold, or red, yellow or green. Other couples, around, above and below, would be able to watch them from glass floors, walls, ceilings. Then the light would die—to spring on in another chamber.
    “Here,” said the girl. “Lie here.”
    Logan eased into the glassfoam bedding. She guided his hand, and he gave himself over to this woman, holding and stroking her body in the darkness.
    “Look!” she cried.
    In the tier above them, bathed in hot gold, a man and a woman writhed in a love heat. Then darkness. The night deepened
    Logan and Karenya were frozen in silver, arms and legs twined. They were conscious of the eyes around them in the dome, watching hungrily.
    Darkness again.
    Light bloomed, died, flared and died in the love depths of the structure. Until dawn sketched the glasshouse. The loving was over and done.

    “Please visit us again,” said the flax-haired girl in transpants. Logan exited, saying nothing.
    Time for duty. No time to sleep. Logan went home to his unit, took a Detoxic, flushing his system, but this didn’t seem to help. His eyes felt grainy; his muscles ached. He suited up and went down to headquarters.
    Francis was there when he walked in.
    The tall man grinned at him. “You look ripped,” he said. “Bad night?”
    Francis never looked ripped. No lifts or glasshouses for him. Not before a job anyway. Francis was cool and clearheaded and sure of himself. Why couldn’t he be like that?
    Actually there were few DS men who possessed the skill and drive of this friendless, loveless man with the mantis-thin body and the black eyes of a hunting cat. Precise, deadly, ruthless. Only the Thinker knew how many runners Francis had Gunned.
    And what does he think of me? Logan asked himself. Always the casual grin, the light remark, telling you nothing. But judging every move.
    The hallway was wide and gray and cold, yet Logan felt the warm sweat gathering under his tunic and along his hands as he walked.
    He’d be all right once he had the Gun. He’d be fine; he always was. Soon he’d be hunting, man-tracking a runner somewhere in the city, doing his job as he had done it for years.
    He’d be all right then.
    The hallway ended. The two men faced a smooth section of wallmetal. “Identities,” said a metallic voice.
    Each man pressed the palm of his right hand against the wall.
    A panel slid back, revealing an alcove lined with worn black velvet. Gleaming in the velvet, long-barreled and waiting, were the Guns.
    Only a DS man could carry a Gun. Each weapon was coded to the operative’s hand pattern, set to detonate on any other human contact.
    Logan reached in and closed his fingers around the big pearl-handled revolver, drawing it free of its snug velvet nest. He checked it; full load, six charges: tangler, ripper, needler, nitro, vapor—and homer.
    Already the sense of power was building in him as he held the Gun, weighing it in his hand, letting the light slide along the chased-silver barrel. Weapons shaped like these had kept the peace in towns named Abilene and Dodge and Fargo. Called “sixguns” then, their chambers held lead bullets. Now, centuries later, their cargo was far deadlier.
    “Identities,” demanded the wall again.
    The two men ignored the malfunction.
    “Identities, please.”

    The report room hummed.
    The room clicked and flashed, metallically coding, decoding, indexing, weighing, processing,