Logan's Run Read Online Free

instill panic in a runner. And panic would kill him. Panic and a homer. Logan moved up a level, to place himself between the runner and Arcade.
    Doyle didn’t panic.
    He was smart. This was no frightened psychotic who’d come unhinged the moment his hand blacked. He’d dodged and shifted like a chess player, calculating each move. He stayed in crowds; he didn’t let himself get locked in on a single level, but stayed close to the main lifts which offered him mobility.
    Logan felt a reluctant admiration for this man. Doyle could have made a fine DS operative. He had the instincts and grace of a hunter. He seemed aware of the DS limitations and exploited the knowledge.
    Enough of this, Logan warned himself. Let’s get on with the job. Fill up with coldness and hate. Build the image of a jackal, a warped coward running from justice. Weak, spineless, selfish. Living beyond his time.
    Chase, capture and kill .
    Logan watched the Follower as one of the tiny light dots neared his position. Doyle should come out of the lift—now.
    The man stepped into view.
    Logan brought up the Gun. He caught a white, shocked face in the sights. It would be an easy shot, a clean kill. In that moment Doyle saw his danger. He tried to back into the lift.
    Logan had him. Before Doyle could take cover the heat-sensing element in the homer would seek him out and destroy him. Logan’s finger curled on the trigger. He hesitated.
    That brief hesitation cost him the shot. Doyle was in the lift, headed down.
    Logan swore tensely. What had gone wrong? Why hadn’t he Gunned the man?
    On the scope he watched the dot descend two levels and head south. Once again Logan moved to cut the runner off. He dropped three levels, circled to the foot of the slope ramp, waiting. This time he would not miss.
    When Doyle appeared he was holding a human shield. A girl, ten or eleven. Struggling in Doyle’s arms, she reacted in terror as she saw the DS man.
    Logan flipped the chamber to tangler and fired the charge. Doyle flung the girl forward into it. The blast of silver threads enveloped her, clouding over her upper body in a tight webbing. Already Doyle was running again.
    A paravane was cruising the area and Logan alerted it. The police would bring the delicate equipment needed to soften and dissolve the threads without harming the girl. Logan put her out of his mind.
    The dot was ahead.
    The main thoroughfare was thick with citizens. Among them, moving away, was Doyle. No good trying to fire a homer in this press of bodies. Too dangerous. There was always the chance that an onlooker would step in front of the charge and divert its course. To a homer, seeking a normal 98.6( in body temperature, one man was like another. Logan would have to be certain of his shot. The only sure way to take out a runner in a packed crowd was to walk directly up to him, jam the Gun in his stomach and fire. But Doyle was too fast to allow this.
    The hunt continued.
    Doyle was veering east again. Making another try for Arcade. Logan moved quickly to intercept him, riding an express belt to the east edge of the concourse. This should do it; Doyle would walk right into his Gun.
    But he didn’t. Something was wrong. It had been a feint. The dot was going down through the complex —heading west. Toward Cathedral.
    Bad. In Cathedral he could lose Doyle forever, and that wasn’t going to happen. Logan put in a call to backup.
    “He tricked me, and I went for it,” he told Francis. “It’s up to you to cut him off at the stone bridge into Cathedral. I’ll meet you there.”
    Francis didn’t waste time with a reply.
    He clicked off.

    Cathedral: a festering sore in the side of Greater Los Angeles, an area of rubble and dust and burned-out buildings, a place of shadow and pollution, of stealth and sudden death. Cubscout territory. If Doyle cleared the bridge the cubs would take him. The kill would be theirs—and that was bad for the record.
    Logan was well aware of Cathedral’s blood