The Lost Perception Read Online Free PDF

headed back into the street—just as a half dozen laser weapons sliced the air in its wake.
    One of the Guardsmen succeeded in beaming the left rear tire and the vehicle caromed into a truck at the next intersection. Its two occupants scurried away under the van, escaping out Forty-Third.
    With the Englishman only a step behind, Gregson lunged off in pursuit, spurred by realization that the driver of the car bore features almost identical to those of the Valorian corpse in Rome—olive complexion, a thin face with compressed lips and tapering chin, and only a fringe of hair.
*  *  *
    Charging into Forty-Third, he immediately spotted the pair. Halfway down the block, they were sprinting along a sidewalk just beginning to fill with the tide of noonday office workers.
    Apparently incapable of maintaining the pace set by his obviously human accomplice, the Valorian faltered in stride. At the corner of Second Avenue, he broke off impulsively to the right, leaving the other to continue his flight along Forty-Third.
    Reaching the intersection first, Gregson saw that the alien had not quite succeeded in losing himself in the crowd on Second Avenue.
    He lunged off in pursuit of the Valorian, indicating that Wellford should continue on after the other fugitive.
    A moment later the alien floundered into a shopper, bounced off and collided with another before falling against a building. But he saw his pursuer closing in on him and stumbled off again. At the intersection of Second and Forty-Fourth, however, he missed the curb and dropped to a knee.
    Recovering his footing, he glanced frantically over his shoulder, then pushed on across the street, turning right on Forty-Fourth and heading toward the river.
    Finding even the thinning sidewalk crowd too much to buck, he plunged back into the street, staggering across the traffic lanes. He barely missed being struck by one car, came up sharply against the fender of another that had screeched to a stop, them made his way clumsily to the opposite sidewalk.
    Scarcely a hundred feet behind the Valorian now, Gregson put on a burst of speed and wedged through several pedestrians to close in on his quarry.
    The slight man clung desperately to a wall, his chest heaving, eyes casting frantically about for an avenue of escape. Then he deliberately jammed his hand into a coat pocket and at once seemed to generate a second wind.
    A moment later he was racing ahead, no longer appearing either injured or exhausted.
    He deftly avoided oncoming pedestrians, took to the roadway, nimbly side-stepped cars, and continued his flight down the other sidewalk.
    Now it was Gregson who found himself becoming winded and lagging in pursuit Up ahead, an automobile careened across the traffic lanes and smashed into another and its driver hung out the window and began shouting his lungs out. Even as Gregson raced by, somebody was administering a hypodermic to the new Screamer.
    Then Gregson caught sight of the fugitive once again—just as the Valorian plunged into an alley. But pursuit was further complicated by two persons who had gone Screamie within moments of each other and had fallen writhing to the sidewalk.
    He leaped over the second and, charging into the alley, saw that the Valorian had come to bay against an insurmountable mound of still uncleared rubble.
    More deliberately now, Gregson started forward, caution slowing his pace almost to a stalk. Behind him, a trio of hypodermic sirens was filling the canyon of Forty-Fourth Street with shrill, baleful cries.
    The Valorian, fright heightening the severity of his features, sidled off into a recess between two buildings on bis right.
    Then Gregson fell abruptly to bis knees and clutched his face.
    Oh, God! he thought Not now! Not a Screamie seizure—now!
*  *  *
    But all the malevolent, roaring light ever spawned in a hateful universe, over billions of years of existence, was searing his brain. Only, it wasn’t radiance at all, but something uncanny,