Moon of Memory

Moon of Memory by Bryce Walton - Barstac found it hard to believe that this girl had helped him escape—until he learned her reason.

Barstac walked the mile across the red Martian plain. He felt but little emotion as he reached the resort building, and the sports rockets waiting on the other side. He had to get one of those rockets and get to Deimos—or die trying. One would be about as good as the other.

Then a slight tension grew in his stomach and sweat began to run down under his helmet and pressure suit, down his sharp nose and the burned face, as he started directly for the sports rockets.

He saw no one at all at first, then the gray-and-black-uniformed cop not ten feet away. The cop's helmet tilted and curious eyes studied Barstac. Barstac didn't wait for any further reaction; his face pulled into a tight scarred grin as he fired. The kinetic energy release burned away the side of the cop's head. A scream floated past from some onlooker, intensified by the communicator in Barstac's helmet.

Barstac ran. He was almost to one of the rockets and exhilaration filled him. He sensed an alien thing, so alien—freedom. Maybe freedom just for a while. Then he heard shouts and saw men running in like spokes into a wheel hub. He threw himself flat behind a loading truck someone had abandoned enroute to a supply rocket.

Superson guns. They wouldn't kill him ... against the law to kill criminals in the New System. More civilized to turn men into zombies for the rest of their lives in a mine three miles underground; they had to take him alive. A superson gun put a man out of action fast, but it didn't kill him. Sound waves tuned right could crack a man's helmet open; in Martian atmosphere that meant unconsciousness in a few seconds.