Unwise Child Read online

  2

  Mike the Angel kept his hand in his pocket, his thumb on a little platethat was set in the side of the small mechanism that was concealedtherein. As he neared the door, the little plate began to vibrate,making a buzz which could only be felt, not heard. Mike sighed tohimself. Vibroblades were all the rage this season.

  He pushed open the rear door rapidly and stepped inside. It was justwhat he'd expected. His eyes saw and his brain recorded the whole scenein the fraction of a second before he moved. In that fraction of asecond, he took in the situation, appraised it, planned his strategy,and launched into his plan of action.

  Harry MacDougal was sitting at his workbench, near the controls of theeye that watched the shop when he was in the lab. He was hunched over alittle, his small, bright eyes peering steadily at Mike the Angel frombeneath shaggy, silvered brows. There was no pleading in thoseeyes--only confidence.

  Next to Old Harry was a kid--sixteen, maybe seventeen. He had the JDstamp on his face: a look of cold, hard arrogance that barely concealedthe uncertainty and fear beneath. One hand was at Harry's back, andMike knew that the kid was holding a vibroblade at the old man's spine.

  At the same time, the buzzing against his thumb told Mike the Angelsomething else. There was a vibroblade much nearer his body than the onein the kid's hand.

  That meant that there was another young punk behind him.

  All this took Mike the Angel about one quarter of a second toassimilate. Then he jumped.

  Had the intruders been adults, Mike would have handled the entiresituation in a completely different way. Adults, unless they arementally or emotionally retarded, do not usually react or behave likechildren. Adolescents can, do, and _must_--for the very simple reasonthat they have not yet had time to learn to react as adults.

  Had the intruders been adults, and had Mike the Angel behaved the way hedid, he might conceivably have died that night. As it was, the kidsnever had a chance.

  Mike didn't even bother to acknowledge the existence of the punk behindhim. He leaped, instead, straight for the kid in the dead-black suedezipsuit who was holding the vibroblade against Harry MacDougal's spine.And the kid reacted exactly as Mike the Angel had hoped, prayed, andpredicted he would.

  The kid defended himself.

  An adult, in a situation where he has one known enemy at his mercy andis being attacked by a second, will quickly put the first out of the wayin order to leave himself free to deal with the second. There is nosense in leaving your flank wide open just to oppose a frontal attack.

  If the kid had been an adult, Harry MacDougal would have died there andthen. An adult would simply have slashed his vibroblade through the oldman's spine and brought it to bear on Mike the Angel.

  But not the kid. He jumped back, eyes widening, to face his oncomingopponent in an open space. He was no coward, that kid, and he knew howto handle a vibroblade. In his own unwise, suicidal way, he wasperfectly capable of proving himself. He held out the point of thatshimmering metal shaft, ready to parry any offensive thrust that Mikethe Angel might make.

  If Mike had had a vibroblade himself, and if there hadn't been anotherpunk at his back, Mike might have taken care of the kid that way. As itwas, he had no choice but to use another way.

  He threw himself full on the point of the scintillating vibroblade.

  A vibroblade is a nasty weapon. Originally designed as a surgeon's tool,its special steel blade moves in and out of the heavy hilt at speedsfrom two hundred to two thousand vibrations per second, depending on thesize and the use to which it is to be put. Make it eight inches long,add serrated, diamond-pointed teeth, and you have the man-killingvibroblade. Its danger is in its power; that shivering blade can cutthrough flesh, cartilage, and bone with almost no effort. It's a knifewith power steering.

  But that kind of power can be a weakness as well as a strength.

  The little gadget that Mike the Angel carried did more than just detectthe nearby operation of a vibroblade. It was also a defense. The gadgetfocused a high-density magnetic field on any vibroblade that cameanywhere within six inches of Mike's body.

  In that field, the steel blade simply couldn't move. It was as though ithad been caught in a vise. The blade no longer vibrated; it had becomenothing more than an overly fancy bread knife.

  The trouble was that the power unit in the heavy hilt simply wouldn'taccept the fact that the blade was immovable. That power unit was inthere to move something, and by heaven, _something_ had to move.

  The hilt jerked and bucked in the kid's hand, taking skin with it. Thenit began to smoke and burn under the overload. The plastic shell crackedand hot copper and silver splattered out of it. The kid screamed as themolten metal burned his hand.

  Mike the Angel put a hand against the kid's chest and shoved. As the boytoppled backward, Mike turned to face the other boy.

  Only it wasn't a boy.

  She was wearing gold lip paint and had sprayed her hair blue, but sheknew how to handle a vibroblade at least as well as her boy friend had.Just as Mike the Angel turned, she lunged forward, aiming for the smallof his back.

  And she, too, screamed as she lost her blade in a flash of heat.

  Then she grabbed for something in her pocket. Regretfully, Mike theAngel brought the edge of his hand down against the side of her neck ina paralyzing, but not deadly, rabbit punch. She dropped, senseless, anda small gun spilled out of the waist pocket of her zipsuit and skitteredacross the floor. Mike paused only long enough to make sure she was out,then he turned back to his first opponent.

  As he had anticipated, Harry MacDougal had taken charge. The kid wassprawled flat on the floor, and Old Harry was holding a shock gun in hishand.

  Mike the Angel took a deep breath.

  "Yer trousers are on fire," said Harry.

  Mike yelped as he felt the heat, and he began slapping at the smolderingspots where the molten metal from the vibroblades had hit his clothing.He wasn't afire; modern clothing doesn't flame up--but it can get prettyhot when you splash liquid copper on it.

  "Damn!" said Mike the Angel. "New suit, too."

  "You're a fast thinker, laddie," said Old Harry.

  "You don't need to flatter me, Harry," said Mike the Angel. "When an oldteetotaler like you asks a man if he's brought some scotch, the man's afool if he doesn't know there's trouble afoot." He gave his leg a finalslap and said: "What happened? Are there any more of them?"

  "Don't know. Might be." The old man waved at his control panel. "Myinstruments are workin' again!" He gestured at the floor. "I'm nae surehow they did it, but somehow they managed to blank out ma instrumentsjust long enough to get inside. Their mistake was in not lockin' thefront door."

  Mike the Angel was busy searching the two unconscious kids. He lookedup. "Neither of them is carrying any equipment in their clothing--atleast, not anything that's self-powered. If they've got pickup circuitsbuilt into the cloth, there must be more of them outside."

  "Aye. Likely. We'll see."

  Suddenly, there was a soft _ping! ping! ping!_ from an instrument on thebench.

  Harry glanced quickly at the receiving screen that was connected withthe multitude of eyes that were hidden around the area of his shop. Thena smile came over his small brown face.

  "Cops," he said. "Time they got here."