by Jerry Oltion
"The whole reason we're here is because we wanted to get the word out." Trent was immediately apologetic. "Look, if it's none of my business, I don't want to know."
"Yeah," Donna added, the first word she'd said besides "Hello." She was chewing furiously at a wad of gum, and evidently had taken to heart her mother's advice not to speak with her mouth full.
"No, it's all right," Judy said. "It's everybody's business. The government may not think so, but damn it, this is supposed to be a democracy."
Trent narrowed his eyes, and coming from under a black Stetson the way it did, and with a full beard hiding the rest of his face, his gaze looked cold and mean. But his words gave just the opposite impression. "Now I'm really not sure I want to know," he said. "Government secrets can be bad news."
"No, no, it's nothing like that," Judy said. "Well, actually, maybe it is, but—" She realized she was babbling. "Look, the reason we're here is because Allen invented a hyperdrive engine." Trent looked at her without saying anything.
"A faster-than-light spaceship drive," she said. "He tested it on board my shuttle, and took us out to Saturn in no time at all."
"Is that so?" Trent asked rhetorically.
"Yes, it is," Judy answered anyway. "And when we got back into orbit, the military wanted us to keep it secret."
"Why?"
Allen said, "Because it'll give everybody on Earth the chance to go exploring the galaxy on their own, that's why."
"How's that again?" Trent asked.
Allen laughed. "You heard me right. Anybody can build one. It's cheap, and easy, and it'll take you to Alpha Centauri as quickly as it'll take you to the Moon."
Trent laughed nervously. "Well, partner, it looks like this time it took you to Wyoming." Judy laughed with him. "That wasn't the hyperdrive," she said. "We came down in an emergency descent module, like a Gemini capsule. First time anybody's ever used one."
"That must have been a pretty wild ride."
"That's an understatement."
Judy leaned back in the seat and described their reentry, then backed up and filled Trent and Donna in on the rest of the flight. They listened to her with ever-growing astonishment, and when she was done, Donna said, "You were actually up there, looking at Saturn's rings, today?" Allen, who had been helping embellish Judy's story, said proudly, "That's right. And we could have gone even farther if we hadn't been worried about the world going up in flames while we were gone. Plus we had to get back and spread the word before the government could put a lid on it." Trent shook his head. "Man, that just burns me up. But it's just like 'em to go suppressing things they don't want us to have. They've been doing it for years. They sat on a hundred-mile-per-gallon carburetor since the nineteen-fifties because they were afraid it would upset the automobile industry, but they wouldn't release it even when everybody switched over to electric." Allen looked thoughtful for a minute, then said, "A hundred miles per gallon? Isn't that beyond even the theoretical limit for efficiency?"
Trent frowned. "Not the way I heard it."
Allen opened his mouth to pontificate, but Judy elbowed him in the side and shook her head and he closed it again without saying anything.
The gravel road led down one last hill, then joined up with a paved and—mercifully—plowed road leading north-south again. Trent slowed a bit for the turn, headed north, then fed power to the motor until the truck reached a hundred and started to drift from side to side on its balloon tires. Evidently he wasn't comfortable driving unless he was just barely in control.
Rock Springs turned out to be a medium-sized town, filling a two-or three-mile-wide low spot in the prairie where a river evidently ran through, and spilling up over the sides into the surrounding hills. When they were still about a mile away from the outskirts, Trent slowed the truck to a crawl and turned off the road, then flipped the switch for four-wheel drive and they bounced along over sagebrush and rocks as he climbed a hill.
"Where are we going?" Allen asked.
"Lookin' for roadblocks," Trent answered.
The sun had already set, and he'd been driving with his lights on, but he switched them off again and drove by the faint evening skyglow until they were just below the crest of the hill. From that vantage they could see the town spread out below them, most of its street lights already on and headlights streaming along the roads. They could also see police cars, their red and blue strobe lights flashing, on all the roads entering town, including the interstate highway that circled it to the north.
"Well now," Trent said, "It looks like time for a little more four-wheeling." He didn't sound dismayed at the prospect.
Judy and Allen hung on to the dashboard and the door and each other as Trent backed up and drove the truck around the back side of the hill, staying high enough to keep out of the worst of the snow, but low enough not to call attention to themselves. The truck tipped alarmingly, and every time they hit a bump with the uphill side Judy was sure they would go over, but Trent evidently knew just how much he could push it. The uphill side got pretty light a couple of times, but the wheels never actually left the ground.
The only sound was the soft whine of the motor, and an occasional klunk or rattle when they bounced over a rock. It reminded Judy of what driving the lunar rover must have been like. She wondered if she would ever have the chance to find out.
Eventually, about the time it was getting too dark to drive without lights, they rounded one last hill and came to a trailer court. There had once been a chain link fence surrounding it, but kids with bicycles and motorcycles had long since torn down a section of it at the end of the last street. Trent squeezed his pickup through the gap, switched out of four-wheel drive, turned on his lights, and drove through the trailer court. The police cars with their flashing lights were only a few blocks away; as he turned onto the main road and accelerated away from them, he grinned and said, "Hah. Roadblocks." Even so, he made Judy and Allen hunch down in the seat so they wouldn't be spotted while he drove on into town. Judy tried to keep track of their turns, at least, so she would have some idea of what part of town they were in, but the streets twisted and veered apparently at random even when they were obviously in a residential area, until she was thoroughly lost.
"What did they do, pave the cow trails?" she asked.
Trent laughed. "Yep. That's exactly what they did."
He drove up a steep hill, zigzagged down a couple more streets, and pulled into a driveway in front of a light pink single-story house. A bare-limbed tree stood in the middle of the front yard. There was an attached two-car garage to the left of the house; Donna pushed the button on the remote control clipped to the sun visor, the door slid upward, and Trent drove the pickup inside. Donna pushed the button again, and the door closed behind them.
Their joints popping, Judy and Allen climbed down out of the pickup, sidled around a more conventional-looking, boxy car parked next to it, and followed Donna into the house. Trent paused long enough to plug the truck's re-charger into the wall socket before he came in. As soon as they got inside the house, it became apparent that Donna ruled within its walls. Frilly curtains, kitchen wallpaper with strawberries on it, shelves full of knick-knacks in the living room—everything bore the stamp of femininity and comfort. To Judy, after hours in the cold and another hour or two in the bucking pickup, it looked like a little slice of Heaven. 12
After she and Allen had showered, put on clothing borrowed from their hosts, and eaten their first meal in half a day, they turned on the TV to see what kind of story the police had concocted to explain their roadblock. It turned out they hadn't. The news didn't even mention it, and the more Judy thought about it, the more ominous that silence felt. The government evidently still thought it had a chance to cover up the whole hyperdrive affair, or they'd have at least admitted that a couple of astronauts had made an emergency landing. As it was, Judy suspected that if she and Allen were caught, they would never be heard from again.
The announcer did mention the television br
oadcast they had made from the communications satellite, but he attributed it to a hoax played by a couple of Caltech students taking advantage of the confusion caused by the computer virus. There were even pictures of a mobile TV van surrounded by police cars, and two kids coming out the open back doors with their hands on their heads. The international news was a little more accurate. The European Coalition admitted that one of their anti-missile satellites had fired on an unknown object that had appeared on their radar, and the U.S. admitted that they had gone on red alert until the "misunderstanding" had been cleared up, but neither side would explain what had caused the incident in the first place. Except for one U.S. senator who suggested that the Europeans had staged the whole thing to test the American defenses.
"They missed an obvious connection," Judy said when a commercial came on. "They should have said the search planes were looking for a couple of French spies who parachuted out over Wyoming. It would have tied their story together perfectly."
"They probably didn't think of it," Allen said. "They're scrambling to keep ahead of the truth. But it's all futile. They can't keep a lid on it forever. People all over the country have already taped our broadcast. And not all the email messages that got sent out are the virus. Somebody is bound to try building the circuit, and it'll only be a matter of time before everybody realizes it's for real." Trent was sitting with Donna in the loveseat to one side of the screen. "That may be so," he said,
"but what are you going to do in the meantime?"
Allen said, "Well, I'll probably try to contact somebody from INSANE, though I'm not sure they'll be able to do us any good, since they're probably under close surveillance themselves. On the other hand, we've still got the hyperdrive. All we need are a few car batteries and a spaceship and we can go anywhere we want."
"Oh, well, sure," Judy said. "Just a couple of batteries and a spaceship. No problem. I'm sure they have dozens of both on clearance down at Wal-Mart. Or do you get them from a used spaceship lot? I forget."
Allen shook his head. "We're going to have to redefine our idea of what makes a spaceship. With the hyperdrive, just about anything that can hold air will do the job, as long as it'll survive a parachute landing."
"Oh," said Judy. "Well, in that case we've already got a spaceship, unless the Feds have found it." Allen nodded. "I suppose we do. It's kind of cramped, though. It wouldn't hold much gear."
"True." Judy yawned. "Excuse me. It's way past my bedtime." Donna jumped up immediately. "Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot, you must be on Florida time, aren't you? I'll make your bed."
Judy got up too. "I'll give you a hand."
When they were alone in the spare bedroom, Donna worked up her courage and asked, "Um, do you guys need separate rooms, or ...?
With everything else that had happened to her that day, Judy hadn't even thought about sleeping arrangements. She did now, and was a little surprised to realize she didn't mind the idea of sharing a bed with Allen. There wasn't any privacy on board the shuttle; she and he had already slept within a couple feet of each other. And they'd pretty much linked their fates together for the foreseeable future; if she insisted on modesty it would just complicate things even more.
Besides, he was kind of cute, and making the great escape with him had somehow made him even more attractive. Judy had no idea if he felt the same about her, but she supposed there was one direct way to find out.
"One bed is fine," she told Donna.
When Allen came into the room a few minutes later, he paused in the doorway and said, "Are, uh, are you sure you, uh, want company tonight?"
Judy had already undressed and slid under the covers. She raised up on one elbow, holding the sheet over her breasts with her free hand in a way she hoped looked both modest and sexy, and said,
"Look, if nothing else, we need to talk. We need to come up with a plan."
"Yeah." He stepped on into the room and closed the door behind him. Judy watched him undress until she realized she was making him self-conscious, so she lay back and watched the shadows on the ceiling until she felt him slide in beside her. He lay straight as a board, careful not to touch her.
"So," he said. "What sort of plan did you have in mind?" She laughed, and rolled over to face him. She didn't bother to keep the covers tight against her body this time. He glanced over at her, then looked back at the ceiling, but she'd seen his pupils dilate. Business first, though. "Well," she said, "let's look at the situation. I don't know about your career as a scientist, but my shuttle piloting days are pretty much over. We're halfway across the country from anyplace familiar, we have practically no money, no clothes of our own, and we're probably the most wanted people in the world right now. What do you suppose we ought to do first?" He crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, when you put it that way, maybe we ought to go undercover. Get jobs. I could probably flip burgers somewhere, and you could wait tables. Or I could charge batteries at a service station and you could clean windshields."
"Why don't you clean windshields while I charge batteries?" Judy asked him.
"Because you'd get better tips than I would, and nobody tips the battery guy."
"Oh."
Allen looked over at her again. "Or there's one other possibility."
"What's that?"
"We could build ourselves a spaceship and explore the galaxy." Judy shivered. "Yeah, we could, couldn't we?"
"I think so. It probably wouldn't even cost that much to get set up for it. What do you think? You want to?"
"Yes," said Judy, so fast her response had to have been reflex. She shivered again. Allen laughed softly. "Sounds like we've got a plan, then." He let his gaze drift downward for a moment to where the sheet had fallen away from Judy's breasts, then he looked back into her eyes.
"What else did you have in mind?"
The bed squeaked. They made love slowly, deliciously, at first to keep from embarrassing their hosts, but they soon forgot all about their surroundings in the pleasure of exploring each other's bodies. That, as much as anything, had been Judy's true intent when she'd decided to seduce Allen. She needed an escape, however temporary, from the immensity of the changes in her life. Afterward, when they lay back against the pillows and Judy rested her head on Allen's chest, she whispered, "Thank you. That was nice."
"Mmm hmm."
"It was a good way to end a really strange day."
Allen didn't say anything for a long time, and Judy had just decided that he must be one of those men who don't talk after sex, when he said, "I have to admit, when I woke up this morning, I didn't really expect to wind up quite like this."
"I hope you're not disappointed," Judy said.
"Only that we didn't try this in free fall when we had the chance. Our starship is likely to be a little cramped."
Judy snuggled closer, sighed. "Free fall is good for acrobatics, but it's hard to just hold someone there."
"Oh." He was silent a while longer, then said, "I wonder what other myths about spaceflight we're going to wind up disproving once we start doing a lot of it?"
Judy had been drifting toward sleep. She surfaced just long enough to consider his question, but her answer, if she ever came up with one, got lost in her dreams.
13
Trent and Donna both worked day jobs. Trent ran a construction crew, building new houses to replace the ones that had been destroyed when Bitter Creek—normally a trickle at the bottom of a crumbling gully—had flooded after a week of intense thunderstorms the previous summer; and Donna sold jewelry in the White Mountain shopping mall on the west side of town. They had both offered to stay home and help Judy and Allen plan their next move, but there was really very little they could do, and besides, calling in sick could cause more suspicion than it was worth. So they left their guests in the house when they went out in the morning, with instructions to make themselves at home. Judy thought she saw a vague what-have-we-gotten-ourselves-into expression on their faces when they left, but if they were thinking that, they never betray
ed it in their words or actions.
As soon as their cars had rolled away up the street, though, she turned to Allen and said, "We've got to find a place of our own. We can't impose on them forever."
Allen said, "Right. Fish and visitors stink after three days. But if we're lucky, we won't have to be here much longer."
"Oh?"
"I've got friends all over the world. Somebody's bound to be able to help us." He went to the closet by the front door and rummaged through the coats there, eventually pulling out a brown and black leather jacket for himself and a puffy pink nylon coat for Judy. Hers had a hood with a fur ruff around it; to cover his own head he took one of two well-used black cowboy hats off the closet shelf.
"Where are we going?" Judy asked him, eyeing the coat dubiously.
"We need to make some phone calls that can't be traced back to here." They cut the map out of the phone book so they could find their way around town, then bundled up and headed out into the winter cold. Judy looked like a flamingo in Donna's pink coat, and Allen looked like a beach bum doing a Clint Eastwood imitation, but nobody on the street paid them any special attention. Evidently people in Wyoming were used to funny-looking clothes, or else too polite to mention it.
There was one advantage to cowboy clothes: anyone looking for two downed astronauts would have a heck of a time getting past their first impressions to even bother looking at Judy's or Allen's faces. There wasn't much snow on the ground in town. By the low, dirty drifts in the lee of houses, it looked like most of it had blown away. It certainly hadn't melted. The morning air felt like liquid oxygen in the lungs, and ice crunched underfoot where patches of it still clung to the sidewalks. As they walked along the residential streets, their breath drifting away in white clouds behind them, Judy found herself thinking about the Earth under her feet. Not just the concrete and the dirt, but the whole planet. She could feel its mass pulling her against it, could feel the rock resisting her footfalls, transferring the force of her leg muscles deeper and deeper into its crust until it was lost in the myriad crisscrossing forces that echoed through its mantle and core. When she looked out through the bare branches of people's yard trees, she saw undulating hills and gullies all the way to the horizon—a horizon that blurred to indistinct haze in the distance—and she felt for the first time the immensity of the planet she called home.
