Logan's Run by William F Nolan, George Clayton Johnson Page A

rattled against metal cleats, leaving an echo path for Logan to follow.
    She pounded along a narrow culture corridor lined with flashing sea life. Squid and porpoise and eel, shark and barracuda and the trunkback turtle marked her passage. Ahead of her the corridor dead-ended at a tall durasteel door controlled by a bar of chilled iron. Jess threw herself at the bar, tugging, dragging her body’s weight against it.
    The bar moved slightly.
    A dry-grass hiss, a rush of heat and, just one inch from Jessica’s head, an armored steg harpoon buried itself in the steel door.
    “Wait up there, girl! Open that hatch, and the sea will take us both.”
    Standing wide-legged, holding a primed steglauncher in two bloated hands, was an incredible figure. Hormones had gone wild in him; a rampaging thyroid had built a giant. His bristled head brushed the corridor ceiling. An oiled slicker the color of midnight draped his swollen frame. His face was a moon.
    His name was Whale.
    “Look out!” Jess pointed down the corridor at Logan.
    Whale billowed about. Seeing the Gun in Logan’s belt, his eyes vanished in moonflesh. The steglauncher fixed its metal eye on Logan’s stomach. “What’s this? Told to wait for two runners, and what do I get? Runner don’t chase a runner.”
    “He’s with DS,” snapped Jess.
    Whale considered this placidly. A sudden thudding in the depths of the bubble city; another collapsing bulkhead. Whale flinched, his great mass rippling.
    “I’m a runner,” said Logan. “I tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t believe me.”
    “So why should I? ” asked Whale quietly. He held up a thick hand, opened sausage fingers. A charcoal flower was lost in folded flesh. The steglauncher did not waver.
    Anger and frustration clouded Logan’s mind. Anything he said could kill him.
    “Just you ease out that Gun and put it on the deck, my lad,” rumbled Whale.
    With the deliberate control of a glassdancer, Logan placed the Gun on the floor, eyes never leaving the cold bore of the steglauncher which moved to cover him.
    He straightened.
    “Now,” said Whale, “let’s us all take a little march through Molly.” He herded them back down the corridor.
    “You drylanders don’t know about Molly. She’s a real fighter, she is. She’s like me. She don’t die easy.”
    Up the slanting wall of a slimed compartment, along a twisting catwalk suspended over blackness, through a beamed jungle of ripped and bent conveyors acrid with the smell of spilled oil and brine. Crab creatures scuttled at their approach; phosphor fish darted in shallow bilgewater as the three figures corkscrewed down through the dying bubble city.
    The water climbed their legs until it took them at thigh level. Whale undogged a final beaded bulkhatch and pushed Logan through ahead of him. Wet tonnages drummed the chamber. In this small coffin space the ocean was a living presence; the sledging boom of iced undersea tides quaked the walls, and dust powdered down in damp brown showers.
    Without the Gun, and under the implacable eye of the weapon in Whale’s hand, Logan felt powerless.
    “She’s sick down here.” said Whale. “Fightin’ hard, she is.” Shifting the launcher, he placed a gentle hand against the pitted metal of the wall. “Hold on, Molly girl,” he crooned. “Ya showed ‘em what ya got. I know you’re hurt. You’ve taken all the sea can give. Hold! I’ve brought ya help.”
    He fixed Logan with his eyes. “If you wanta live, mate, you’ll help Molly fight her battle. Just put your weight to that wall.”
    The mountain of man squeezed back, out of the chamber. “When the bulkhead goes, you go with it.”
    “Wait,” cried Jess. She blocked the hatch. “You’re not leaving him here? “ 
    Whale rumbled. “Where else? Molly needs him.” “But then you’re no better than he is. A killer.”
    “A man kills to save himself.” He brushed her aside, slammed the hatch and dogged it.
    Outside, he handed her a key.