Free Stalking the Nightmare by Harlan Ellison

he prayed to some unknown God to let the mind-blanking cap work well enough. Well enough to keep the sykops off him till he could kidnap a Driver.

    Rike Akisimov had been sentenced to Io penal colony for a thousand years. The jurymech knew such a sentence bordered on the ridiculous; even with the current trends in geriatrics, no man could live past three hundred. The body tissue, the very fiber, just wouldn’t stand up to it.
    But in token hatred for this most vile of criminals, the placid and faceless jurymech had said: “We, the beings of the Solarite, sentence you, Rike Amadeus Akisimov, to the penal colony on Io for a period of one thousand years.”
    Then, as the jury room buzzed with wonder, the machine added, “We find in your deeds such a revulsion, such a loathing, that we feel even this sentence is too light. Rike Amadeus Akisimov, we find in you no identification with humanity, but only a resemblance to some odious beast of the jungle. You are a carrion-feeder, Akisimov; you are a jackal and a hyena and a vulture, and we pray your kind is never again discovered in the universe.
    “We cannot even say, ‘God have mercy on your soul,’ for we are certain you have no soul!”
    The jury room had been stunned into silence. For an implacable, emotionless jurymech to spew forth such violent feelings, was unprecedented. Everyone knew the decision-tapes were fed in by humans, but no one, absolutely no one, could have fed in those epithets.
    Even a machine had been shocked by the magnitude of Akisimov’s crimes. For they were more than crimes against society. They were crimes against God and Man.
    They had taken him away, preparing to lead him in the ferry-flit designed to convey prisoners from court to the spaceport, when he had struck. By some remarkable strength of his wrists—born of terror and desperation—he had snapped the elasticords, clubbed his guards and broken into the crowds clogging the strips, carrying with him a sykop blaster.
    In a few minutes he was lost to the psioid lawmen, had ripped a mind-blanking mesh cap from a pedestrian’s head, and was on his way to the one escape route left.
    To the Hall and the psioids known as Drivers.
    She came out of the building, and Akisimov recognized her at once as a senior grade Driver. She was a tall girl, tanned and beautifully-proportioned, walking with the easy, off-the-toes stride of the experienced spaceman. She wore the mind’s eye and jet tube insignia of her class-psi on her left breast, and she seemed totally unconcerned as Akisimov stepped out of the service entrance, shoved the blaster in her ribs, and snarled, “I’ve got nothing but death behind me, sister. The name is Akisimov …” The girl turned a scrutinizing stare on him as he said his name; the Akisimov case had been publicized; madness such as his could not be kept quiet; she knew who he was, “… so you better call a flit, and do it quick.”
    She smiled at him almost benignly, and raised her hand lazily in a gesture that brought a flit scurrying down from the idling level.
    “The spaceport,” Akisimov whispered to her, when they were inside and rising. The girl repeated the order to the flitman.
    In half an hour they were at the spaceport. The criminal softly warned the psioid about any sudden moves, and hustled the girl from the flit, making her pay the flitman. They got past the port guards by the Driver showing her i.d. bracelet.
    Once inside, Akisimov dragged the girl out of sight behind a blast bunker and snapped quickly, “You have a clearance, or do I have to hi-jack a ship?”
    The girl stared blankly at him, smiling calmly and enigmatically.
    He jabbed the blaster hard into her side, causing her to wince, and repeated viciously, “I said, you got a clearance? And you damned well better answer me or so help me God I’ll burn away the top of your head!”
    “I have a clearance,” she said, adding solemnly, “you don’t want to do this.”
    He laughed roughly, gripped