Mackey blushed despite himself, and concentrated on the screen. "Let me see if I can bring back the last test cycle. Maybe we can replicate it." He tried a series of commands.
The screen printed a message. "System not powered."
Tikhonov read over Mackey's shoulder. "What does that mean?"
"Try the labeled button on the console. It must want the system to be powered up before loading the test cycle."
Tikhonov reached and pressed the heavy button. A series of lights and meters on the panel jumped to life. From the test track ahead of them, the P-car whirred into idle state as the track was electrified.
"That's odd," Mackey said, and tried his command again. The computer refused to respond, only displaying the message, "Start system countdown."
"That must mean this button here," Tikhonov said as he reached for the panel.
"Wait, maybe we shouldn't—"
Tikhonov hit the button. Yellow revolving lights lanced out from the ceiling, and a warning bell began ringing.
"Oh no . . ."
The sound of heavy, high-voltage current came crackling from the drone overhead, as the spectrographic equipment became ablaze with data. And the P-car began accelerating down the track towards the opposite end of the room.
Mackey furiously pecked at the keyboard, trying break in to the routine, but the car was already gaining speed, nearly sixty miles an hour as it made it through the halfway point. Tikhonov was watching a closed circuit view from the opposite end of the hall, displayed on a screen on top of the console in front of them. As the P-car sped towards the camera, he stared, captivated by the inevitability of it.
"Evgeny! Hit the emergency brake!" Mackey desperately pointed at the button on the end of the console.
"Oh! Of course!"
But it was too late. The P-car slammed into the barrier at the far end of the track, going close to one hundred miles an hour. The wheels derailed, snapping off the Perspex bubble of the passenger compartment, which impacted against the wall, crushed like a pop can. The heavy drivetrain and wheels came crashing through next, taking out the closed circuit camera, racks of test equipment, and crushing the bare cement bricks of the wall into a cloud of powder. The entire mess popped through the wall onto the other side, where California sunlight shined through the dust and smoke. An alarm was wailing, blazing electrical horn agony throughout the test chamber, turning yellow lights to red.
Mackey and Tikhonov didn't move for a moment, too shocked by the destruction to know what to do. Then, Tikhonov clearly remembered the technicians behind them. He dashed back and looked through the door.
"Shit! They're gone, Fred!"
Mackey just stared at the cloud of debris that had been the P-car, at the far end of the track. "That can't happen, it isn't supposed to . . ."
"What the hell is happening down here?" a voice shrieked from outside the door behind them.
"Come on!" Tikhonov snatched Mackey's arm, pulling him out of his stupor, and dragging him down the test track towards the wreck. Mackey remembered where they were, and began to run.
"Hey, stop!" Gunshots rang out down the test chamber.
Mackey and Tikhonov wheeled to see several security guards with weapons drawn. "Look away, Fred!" Mackey was already half-turned, continuing to run, when Tikhonov fired the dazzle pistol. A green flash, like a flat circle of lightning, appeared momentarily in the space between the guards and the two interlopers. Mackey looked back and saw the guards clutching the walls, hands to their eyes, screaming.
"Run!"
They dashed down the test chamber, closing the distance between themselves and the wreck of the P-car. Mackey looked over his shoulder again to see the guards starting to recover, looking around the room dazed, trying to find the two escaping men.
The wreck was even worse than it looked. The electrical motors that powered the wheels had cracked out of their heavy steel cases. Large capacitors from the power system had launched out of their mounts and pierced the remains of the passenger compartment like cannon shells, punching through the Perspex and then through the concrete bricks behind. Mackey caught sight of a bench seat, smashed into plastic fragments the size of potato chips, only recognizable by the scraps of vinyl that had been the cushion, now beginning to catch fire in the smoldering chemical blaze of a breached battery unit.
Shots rang out behind them again, hitting the concrete wall far above them, but Mackey was sure the next rounds would be closer. "Through the hole!" Tikhonov grabbed Mackey by the hand and pulled him through.
Stunned themselves by the bright afternoon sun, it took a few seconds to get their bearings. They were behind the Rand facility, as they expected. But where now? There was a stretch of tarmac leading to a dirt strip, like a small runway or test field. But that was an open space, hundreds of yards across. As soon as the guards emerged, they would be sitting ducks. Mackey looked to his left, and saw a chain link fence with a small access track for service vehicles on the other side, then another fence, and then the tracks of the West Coast Arterial, suspended forty feet above them on large concrete footings.
"Over the fence!" he shouted to Tikhonov.
They climbed, metal wire cutting into their fingers and feet, until finally they could throw themselves over the top. Then they ran a few hundred feet further down the service track, and began climbing again.
At the top of the second fence, Mackey risked a look back towards the building, where a thin trail of smoke was curling up out of the hole that they had made in the side of Rand Aeronautical. The guards had emerged, and caught sight of them. They chanced a few shots, which glanced off the chain link in a shower of sparks, and began climbing the fence after them. Mackey and Tikhonov dropped to the ground on the other side and dashed under the arterial viaduct, putting as much distance as they could between the guards and themselves.
"Hopper's transmitter!" Tikhonov yelled. "Press the button!"
Thankfully, it was still in his suit pocket. Mackey dragged out the aerial and jammed the button hard, clutching it in his fist as they ran over the gravel beneath the arterial. Above them, they could hear the rushing whirs of rush hour traffic shooting back and forth. It sounded like a river filled with wind. But above the sound, he also heard a strange gruff noise, like an animal growl. It was oddly mechanical, like a winch, or a saw. Looking behind them, he saw a bright light, getting larger and larger.
"What is that?" he yelled to his companion.
"I think it's a motorcycle!"
"A motorcycle?"
"With an internal combustion engine!"
Whatever it was, it was gaining on them, and there was no way they could outrun it. Ahead of them, in the center of the arterial, was a narrow staircase crawling up underneath the tracks above. A maintenance access way.
"Up the stairs!" he called. They dashed upwards, flat leather shoes banging against the metal slat steps. At the top was a door, and a small security console. Tikhonov threw himself against it, but the door held fast. Mackey looked down to see the motorcycle approaching the stairway, a two-wheeled vehicle with a bright light on the front, sounding like angry beast.
Mackey reached under his jacket and pulled out the electro-blast. He folded out the stock and jammed it under the shoulder of his suit jacket. He raised it to the security console.
"Wait! The transmitter!"
Mackey gasped, and quickly handed the device to Tikhonov, who held it out as far away from them as possible, over the edge of the stairs. Mackey aimed, and pulled the trigger. There was a slight pop, like a camera flashbulb, and then nothing.
"Well that's just great!"
The security console light blinked from red to green. Tikhonov tried the door, and it pushed open. He pushed Mackey through and looked back down the stairs, to where two security agents were just mounting the steps. He pointed the dazzle pistol.
"Hey!"
>
They looked up on cue, and averting his eyes, Tikhonov released another disk of green lightning, sending the agents tumbling backward down the stairs as they tripped on their feet, temporarily blinded. Then he followed Mackey through the door.
There was another set of small stairs formed out of concrete, and another door—this one unsecured. They quickly pushed through, and found themselves in the middle of the arterial.
P-cars rushed in both directions, at speeds that might have been up to two hundred miles an hour. At the height of rush hour traffic, the cars were largely in formation, and the slipstream buffeted them back and forth across the thin concrete channel on which they stood, no more than six feet from the traffic.
They ran down the center of the tracks, bombarded by wind and noise from all sides. It was like standing on a highway of comets, each round shape blazing with the reflection of the afternoon sun, chilling them to the bone with rush of air and sound. The P-cars, from the outside, had the auditory presence of meteoric insects, engines whining with voltage, carving up the steel tracks with their wheels. It was impossible to focus on the sight of one as it passed by, it moved so quickly. Mackey looked up onto the tracks, and saw, for a split second, the eyes of a small boy sitting on the seat next to his mother. It wasn't even a fraction of a moment, more like a memory; real, but gone before it could entirely take shape.
The guards were behind them again, a few hundred yards back, dashing down the concrete drainage channel after them. Tikhonov fired the dazzle pistol, but now wise to the game, the guards saw the raised weapon and hid their eyes, then kept running after the green flash had disappeared.
"Now what?" yelled Tikhonov over the noise.
Mackey pointed off to the right, across the arterial flow. "The exit track! If we can get to it, we can run down to surface tracks!"
Tikhonov gaped at him. "Are you crazy? It's across six lanes of track! We'll never make it!"
Mackey stepped to the edge of the channel, mounting the raised lip that led up to the tracks' surface.
"We can! Stopping distance is too far at this speed, but the cars will automatically emergency brake to reduce impact speed against a track obstruction. We should gain half a second to dash. Take off your coat! Make yourself look big to the radar so it can see us!"
Tikhonov looked skyward and mumbled to himself. "Just like chasing off a bear . . . "
They held their coats above their heads, and waited until there was a gap between the next approaching formation. It wasn't a big gap, but it would have to do.
"Go!" Mackey shouted. They stepped onto the tracks, waving their jackets above their heads. The rapidly approaching P-cars let out a grinding scream as the radar sensor triggered the emergency brakes and the motors reversed current flow, sucking the energy out of the electric drive, absorbing the force of inertia. The oncoming cars were slowing, but not enough, becoming larger and larger as the shining Perspex nose of the lead car came up onto Mackey and Tikhonov. Mackey felt the slipstream of a formation tear at his clothes as it passed them on the adjacent track.
"Go!" he screamed again, and they dodged forward on to the next line. The braking formation, now with the path cleared ahead of it, resumed acceleration, rocketing past them down the line. Mackey could just make out the bodies of passengers thrown to the floor by the emergency braking, looking around themselves trying to figure out what had happened. It was likely none of them had ever felt a P-car throw on its emergency brakes before.
The sound of the passing formation's roaring slipstream was quickly replaced by a terrible screaming as the next approaching line of cars engaged their brakes, still tumbling towards Mackey and Tikhonov, the latter desperately flailing his coat in the air. The next track cleared with a massive whoosh of air, and they lept onward, slowly progressing outward towards the exit track. The braking formation continued, again showcasing cars full of confused passengers picking themselves off the bottoms of the passenger compartments.
And again, the scream of brakes coming at them down the track. Mackey grabbed the back of Tikhonov's shirt, waiting to pull the man with him as soon as he saw an opening. But the bottom of his stomach dropped out. Coming up along the far side the braking formation was another formation on the next track, passing the slowing formation easily, its path unobstructed.
"Back! We go back!" Mackey screamed, pulling Tikhonov along with him as they leapt back the way they came. The two P-car formations passed them as the next approaching line on their track began braking, sending its electric squeal out on the air towards them.
"This is not what I would call progress!" Tikhonov yelled, waving the jacket in the air like a flag.
Mackey looked at the oncoming traffic, and made a judgment call. "Okay! When I say, we cross two!"
"You mean we skip one, or we skip two?"
The screaming brakes were fast approaching, the first P-car in formation looming large, bearing down on them with incredible speed. Mackey grabbed Tikhonov's shirt collar tightly.
"Just follow!"
The adjacent track was cleared with a gust of wind, and they leapt across onto the third lane, and then another gust, and they leapt again to the fourth. It took them longer than Mackey had thought, and another formation was bearing down on them fast.
"Again! Go!"
The mounted the fifth track, and then quickly, the sixth. Finally they made the exit, and began running. If only they could make it to the descending curve of the ramp before a P-car switched onto the exit, they could jump off onto the embankment. It was one hundred yards away.
Mackey heard the scream of braking. A P-car was approaching on the exit track. "Run, Tikhonov! Run!"
They dashed for it, but it was too far. The P-car was on top of them, brakes shrill like the cackle of a crow. Mackey turned and threw up his arms.
The P-car stopped. The gullwing doors popped open, and the car stood motionless. Music poured out of the open car, a popular radiophonic folk ballad that Mackey was somewhat familiar with. Panting, covered in sweat, he looked up and saw the Postal Bureau logo on the rounded bubble nose. The car was empty.
Tikhonov turned and saw the stopped car. "Is that our ride?"
Bullets glanced off the concrete and one careened off the logo on the car's nose itself as the Rand Aeronautical guards opened fire between P-car traffic from the drainage channel. Mackey and Tikhonov dashed for the P-car and threw themselves in, as the lyricist's voice made the plaintive case for track overpasses as an analogy for unrequited love.
The doors closed, the car sped up, taking the exit at speed, dashing across three lanes of traffic on the surface tracks without regard for the signals, causing a new cycle of shrill braking as the pattern was disrupted, before accelerating up the entrance ramp on the other side of the junction and rocketing into traffic on the arterial heading the opposite way. The men lay on the floor of the car, panting, while the ballad played at an unreasonable volume in the relative silence of the car's interior. It was like they had a glass dome slipped over top of them in the middle of a hurricane. Only with a teenage heart throb musical act somehow captured along with them.
"Hello, Mackey?" The Assistant Secretary's voice emanated from the console as the music, thankfully, automatically decreased in volume. "I hope the remote car got you both back, safe and sound without any collisions. Remote signal overrides tend to be a bit . . . unpredictable. I'm bringing you back to Miramar Station. Parsons and Ross think they have a target destination for us, so we need to meet them in Nevada, immediately."
"Anonymized video transmission, indeed." Mackey sighed, catching his breath. "Now I'll never be able to relax inside my car again without worrying that someone, somewhere, is watching me."
"As long as you can still adjust the radio manually, I'll be fine," Tikhonov gasped.
Lunar Post Card, Pre-Paid
Service via South Atlantic Anomaly Sorting Station
<
br /> Julie Harrison
7002 Denison Ave
Unit 3145
Cleveland, OH 44102-6014-6478-8173
United States
Earth
Julie,
Only 6 months more until I'm back at home with my little girl! I hope school is going better for you, darling. Your mother should have a present from me to give to you. It's not from Copernicus Station, because we can't take anything back to Earth with us—but I think you'll like it. My work is going well, even better than we hoped. You know I can't tell you any details, but the Postal Bureau is very pleased with our digging progress. We've made a number of important discoveries. Be good for your mother, dear. I love you, and I'll see you soon.
Your father,
Harlan
Box 451-672
Copernicus Station
Montes Carpatus Route H
Luna
Chapter 11
Primum Movens
Kicking out a sonic boom over the Pacific Ocean, the PE-70 Valkyrie rocketed northeast over the coast near San Clemente, speeding inland over the mountains, clear across the Mojave, and then over the small gambling resort of Las Vegas before slowing, circling down from the stratosphere to come in for a landing at Mail Sorting Area 51, deep in the desert of southern Nevada.
Mail Sorting Area 51 was one of the most notorious guarded Postal Bureau complexes in the world, because of a popular myth about the presence of alien technology kept there, recovered from a supposed crash in Roswell, New Mexico, in the late 1940s. After all that Mackey had seen of the real secret technology of the Postal Bureau and the Department of Transportation, he couldn't help but shake his head at these amateurish theories. If only the public knew the real secrets. And yet, when the Assistant Secretary had met them by the aircraft at Miramar and announced their destination, he did look at her askance, briefly.
Hopper, for her part, couldn't resist ribbing him a bit about it once they were on board the aircraft. From her desk, still deep among her files and with the telephone in her hand, she took a moment to turn to Mackey and offer a joke.
Orthogonal Procedures Page 22
