Darla leaned over the seat. "Jake, from what Winnie tells me, Roland's right. She wasn't affected by the field, or the effect, or whatever it was."
"Most likely it was attuned to human neural patterns," I ventured. "I'll buy that. What else did she say?"
"She said she heard someone walk up to the house. She got frightened, tried to wake us, but we were out cold. Then she ran outside and hid in the bush."
"Did she see anything?"
"No, but she says she knows that two humans came into the house, and one nonhuman. She says the nonhuman frightened her a great deal. The smell was bad."
"Does she have any idea what they did?"
Darla asked her. I realized then that, while I couldn't understand Winnie most of the time, Darla never seemed to have any trouble.
"She doesn't know," Darla reported. She looked over my shoulder and then said, "Jake, how fast are we going?"
I looked. The needle had just edged past Mach point five. "Wow," was all I could say.
"Jesus Christ!" John shouted.
I looked up. Sam was ahead. I swerved to the left and we passed him like he was painted on the road.
"Slow down, speed demon!" Sam's voice came from the dashboard under the windscreen, where I had thrown the key. "Crazy kids! No sense of responsibility." He chuckled. "You're right. That buggy is a blast from the past. Look's like a middle-twentieth-century Chevrolet to me. I'm no expert, though, on these things."
I eased up on the pedal, and the needle fell off to saner speeds. "How's our pursuit doing?"
"He's pacing us now. Knows he can't catch you."
"Yeah, but he can catch you, Sam. Dump the load. Unhook the trailer."
"Not on your life, son. We're paid to deliver goods, not leave 'em strewn over a hundred klicks of road. Besides, he's after.you now, not me."
"Sam, I'm not so sure of that. If I had any sort of priceless artifact, especially a map, wouldn't I leave it with you? Why do you think they wanted to search you? Petrovsky might try to disable you and do just that."
"Who the hell's Petrovsky?"
"Sorry. The guy nipping at our tail."
"I can handle any cop who has a notion to breach my road rights."
"Sam, you know you can't. So, cut the crap and dump it." "Is that any way to talk to your father? Moreover, my disrespectful son, you forget something. I'm still mostly machine ― in fact, let's face it ― I'm nothing but, or so they tell me. Machines must obey programming. And I can't circumvent your tricky anti-hijack program. Only you can detach the trailer with your thumbprint."
He was right, and I had forgotten completely. "Sorry, Dad."
Alarms blared from somewhere inside the vehicle, startling everybody. We then watched goggle-eyed as strange things began to happen to the instrument panel. Magically, the funny dials and gauges metamorphosed into more conventional-looking readouts, melting and reshaping as if worked by the hand of an unseen sculptor. It took but a few seconds, and the final result was a complete portal-approach display.
"Remarkable," John said beside me, his bony knees sticking up sharply.
"Roland, change places with John. Give me a hand with these readouts." They did. John breathed easier and stretched out, glad to get off the hump that housed the drive train… at least I thought that was what it was.
I missed the warning signs, a blur beside the road. The cylinders split the sky ahead, towering columns of unknowable energy and substance. As we watched, a phthisic finger of lightning crackled down from a clear sky to touch the lead left cylinder. Branching secondary tendrils snaked from it to link the others in a fiery web, and for a second an eerie bloom of pale blue light grew around the whole portal array, then shrunk back on itself, vanished.
I had only seen it happen once before. You can divide your life into sections marked off by the event of witnessing a portal call down a bolt from the clear blue. Everyone exhaled.
"Seat belts?" I blurted. "Any safety harnesses in here?"
"No," Darla said. "Don't see any, except for this funny hand strap hung between the windows."
Strange. "Well, grab it, or something. Anything." And then I remembered what was on the other side of the portal. "Windows? Are all the windows shut?"
Are all the windows shut? I couldn't believe I was saying it. Could it be that this contraption wasn't vacuum-worthy? But no. Its rightful owner had passed us on the Skyway, and
he could only have come from Groombridge, the only portal leading to Goliath. Unless he'd been out on the plains punking around. But there was nothing out there but hoplite crabs and misery. The possibility lingered, but surely the windows weren't glass….
"All shut, Jake," Darla said. "As a matter of fact, the back window on Susan's side was open just a slit, and I happened to catch it closing by itself when the needle went over one hundred. Now my window handle won't budge."
Things were happening too fast, and I was disoriented. The commit marker streaked past, and the guide lane skittered beneath us. We were streaking across a perilously thin edge of safety at a speed that was too fast for reaction, almost. But through the wheel I felt another controlling force, an assisting hand ― an automatic system of some sort. The instrument panel was lit up in reassuring green, and things seemed to be going fine.
The cylinders whizzed by in a flickering blur, and we were through the aperture.
We arrived smoothly on a world of mirror-flat ice plains, broken by low outcroppings of dark rock and occasional fracture rills. The road cut straight ahead to a deceptively close horizon. It was dead night, but a million stars gave the ice a sheen by which you could pick out features of the landscape. And almost directly overhead there hung a chandelier of seven bright stars, brighter by far than any seen on most planets. I pressed my face against the window and looked up for a second or two.
There had been no surge of speed when the car had hit vacuum. I checked the machometer. Yes, only a slight increase. The car had some remarkable aerodynamic properties.
I tried calling Sam, but there was no answer. Too early. I had no idea how far behind he had been, and now I was worried.
Alarms sounded again. The sound was different this time. A scanner screen appeared on the panel, showing traffic ahead, and I slowed down. Soon we were down below Mach point three, and decelerating. I didn't want to get too far ahead of Sam. There was now a decision to make: where to go? Seven Suns offered three portals, with three separate ingress points feeding into them: one from Goliath, two from other interstellar routes. One portal led back to the heart of the Terran Maze by a many-light-year jump, another to Ryxx territory. The third was potluck, so there were really only two choices, unless we felt very lucky.
"Sam, come in. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Captain. I've got a cop on my tail, though."
I made a decision and braked. "I'm slowing down."
"Negative! Get your butt through that Ryxx portal! Get out of T-Maze. It's your only chance."
"I think I can handle him. This car is some kind of fused-up alien buggy with all kinds of surprises in it. Haven't found the armaments yet, but I've a feeling I may be able to outshoot an interceptor. Whereas you―"
"Son, think a moment. What can this Petrovsky character do to me? If he pulls me over, so what? If he searches, what'II he find? Meanwhile, you can get away."
"He may impound you."
"Again, so what? I'll cool my rollers for a while till you get back."
It did make sense. "Okay. I guess." I didn't like it.
"In fact, I'm kind of hoping he does pull me over. Maybe a Roadbug'lt come along and ― Hold on."
The key was silent for half a minute. Then I said, "Sam? What's going on?"
"He passed me. I said he was after you."
"Yeah." I upped our speed as much as the traffic would allow. I was weaving in and out of lanes now, passing rigs, roadsters, alien conveyances of every sort and description. "One problem about ducking into Ryxx Maze, though. One of those blips you painted wa
s a Ryxx vehicle."
"They sprung you, now they're chasing you. Logical."
"I've learned through the Teelies here that it wasn't the Ryxx who got me out."
"Who did? I'm confused."
"That makes three of us. I'm twice as confused as you. I think it was the Reticulans."
"Oh, well, that explains everything."
"Clear as shit, isn't it?" Something occurred to me. "The thing that really puzzles me is how the Rikkis traced us to the Teelies' farm. The Militia did it by making inquiries in town, but the Rikkis couldn't have done that. And Petrovsky told me that he was following them." I realized that Sam was in the dark about all of that. "Sorry, Sam. I'll fill you in when we have time."
"Oh no, go ahead. I'm writing this all down. What about Wilkes?"
"No idea. As far as I know, he's out of this whole mess." "Well, that's one less fly on the pile." A pause. "Jake, you'd better see about what guns you can bring to bear on the cop."
"It'll be hard, on the run like this, but as I said, you wouldn't believe what this buggy's capable of."
The tumoff for the T-Maze portal came up. The Skyway split into one branch that curved gradually to the left and one that continued straight. Most of the traffic veered left, but I kept our bow pointed dead ahead. "Okay, there goes one option. Now it's either Ryxx country or oblivion."
"Are you sure the Ryxx are in on this snipe hunt?" "I have it on good authority that they are." "Uh-huh. Beats me what you should do, then. Maybe you should've taken that turnoff."
"Damned if I do, damned if I don't. If I head on through to Theron, it means another high-speed chase and few places to duck off-road, because of the bogs. Next up is Straightaway, which is all salt flats and no place to hide, then Doron, where there's another Militia base. If you remember, we were guests there once."
"Oh, yes. I remember. Hm."
"So, I'd rather take my chances with the Ryxx. Besides. you used to have friends there. Maybe Krk-(whistle/click) knows something about this. Wasn't that his name?"
"Approximately. Of course, it's 'she' now. They all turn diploid in later life. But her nest is ten thousand klicks into the Maze. And that was a hell of a long time ago."
Options were indeed dwindling. I half-entertained going off-road over the ice to find the T-Maze road ― but I had five innocent lives to consider. I hadn't begun to decide what to do with the Teelies. Maybe turning myself in would be the best thing after all. Finally clear up this mess. Except…
Except for the small matter of the Delphi series. But then, maybe it wouldn't be all that bad. Hell. So what if it meant a stint in a psych motel, drooling and finger-painting the walls with my own feces? Couple of months learning all over again to go potty, wave bye-bye. Could do that standing on my head. I'd come out of there a new man. Um.. no thanks.
The traffic thinned. The terrain flattened even more, low ridges becoming more scarce. The car became a mite scurrying across a giant billiard ball. Above, the stars were crisp and clear, like clean little holes drilled through black velvet. Around us, in the biggest hockey rink ever, ice glistened in the interstellar night.
A warning tone sounded once again, this time a gonging bell that said, "Battle stations!" The instrument panel underwent still another transformation, while the scanner screen tracked a fast-moving blip. Looked like a floater missile.
"Roland, see what you can do with this fire-control board."
Roland scrutinized the panel, tentatively fingered a few controls. "Hard to say what's going on here," he said. "All these systems have funny designations. What's 'Snatch Field Damp' supposed to mean?"
"I can guess," I said, amazed.
"It's closing pretty fast. What's your speed?"
"Point three."
"Well, I'd advise accelerating."
I already was. The car surged f6rward, pressing us into our seats.
"I think it's at two kilometers, still closing."
"Point three five."
"Still closing."
"Coming up on point four."
"Still closing, but slower." Roland tested a switch or two. "This says 'Arm' but I don't know what it's arming. Some very strange things here."
"Point four."
"Still closing."
I floored the pedal. The engine sent furious vibrations through the wheel and into my hands and arms. A high whine, barely audible, was all that conducted through the hotwall. "Point four five."
"Still closing, I'm afraid. Must have variable thrust. Emergency boosters. Oh, damn. Wait a minute, this must be it. 'Antimissile Zap.' God, this is crazy."
"Point five."
"Closing. Has to run out of fuel sooner or later."
"Don't count on it," I said. "Point five five."
"Still closing. About a kilometer." Roland grunted. "G-force makes it hard to bend forward." He strained to read the panel.
"This must be an automatic system. All right, I've armed it.
Now what?"
It struck me that Roland should be having a little more trouble in bending forward. Our acceleration was rapid, should have been something around three Gs. But it didn't feel like that much. "Point six."
"Closing, but slowly."
Another moment. The acceleration seemed to be picking up even more. "Point six five."
"Closing."
"Point seven! God help us."
"Closing. Half a klick."
"Point seven five!"
"Closing! But barely."
Everything was a blur outside. The car swerved murderously with every random movement of my tensed arms. "I don't know how long I can keep this up," I said.
"I'm working on the problem," Roland said calmly. "All right, now, everything seems to be set, but what activates the whole system?"
"Point eight!"
"Um… wait a moment. No, that isn't it. 'Antimissle Zap.' Remarkable way of putting it. What's this? I can't understand… 'Eyeball' and 'Let George Do It.'" Roland looked at me, baffled. "What could that possibly mean?"
"For Christ's sake, Roland! LET GEORGE DO IT!"
"Huh? Oh, okay." He pressed a glowing tab and something left the rear of the car in a green flash. A few seconds later a brighter flash lit up the road behind us in a soundless concussion.
Roland studied the scanners. "No more missile," he said with satisfaction. He turned to me and grinned. "That was easy." He looked back, then said with concern, "But a bigger blip is gaining on us. The interceptor, I guess. Looks like he's
on afterburners."
"I believe," John broke in with a solemn voice, "that we just passed the turnoff to the Ryxx Maze portal."
10
Nobody spoke for a while as it sank in. We were heading straight for never-never land with exactly two alternatives: to double back on the road and confront our pursuer, or to swing out over methane-water ice and take our chances with hidden crevices, geothermal sinkholes, and occasional impact craters. I braked automatically, then wondered what I was doing, where I was going. Turn back? Give up? I saw no controls for roller supertraction and doubted that the car could negotiate a surface of metallic methane ― pure water ice, maybe, but not water caged in frozen gas. Then again, I had no justification to put limitations on this buggy.
John broke the silence. "Jake? What do we do?" All eyes were on me ― Teelie eyes, that is. Darla and Winnie were talking in hushed tones. I checked the scanner. Petrovsky was gaining on us very quickly now that I had decelerated. I goosed it a little to give me more time. The road was still perfectly straight, the terrain relentlessly flat. I kept my eyes glued ahead. Sudden obstacles would be death at these speeds.
"Jake?" John reminded me softly.
"Yeah." I exhaled, my mind made up. "John, I'm not going to stop. Don't ask me to justify the morality of it. I can't, except to say that I can't possibly give myself up. I'm going to shoot the potluck portal."
Susan gasped. John took it silently. Roland was preoccupied with the instrument panel.
"If y
ou have a gun," I went on, "I'd advise you to pull it on me right now. The portal's coming up."
Outlined in faint zodiacal light at the horizon, the cylinders were rising above the ice like dark angels on Judgment Day.
"Let me say this," I continued. "I wouldn't shoot this portal if I thought it'd be suicide. You can believe me or not. Take it for what it's worth, but I wouldn't do it if I thought there was no chance of getting back."
Roland looked at me. "Of course, Jake. Everybody knows you'll get back ― if you believe the road yams."
"I'm grounding my belief in firmer evidence than beerhall bullshit. Again, take it for what it's worth, but I intend to get back from the other side. In fact, I know I will."
"How do you know?" John asked.
"Can't explain right now. I just know."
John looked at me intently. "Jake, I'm asking you to reconsider."
"Sorry, John. Put a gun to my head and I'll stop. I don't particularly want to shoot a potluck portal, but I will if no one stops me." It sounded crazy even to me.
Susan was quietly sobbing in the back seat.
"Threatening one's driver," Roland said acerbically, "at a little under Mach point seven strikes me as slightly absurd." He turned to John. "Can't you see that Jake's in the Plan?"
I caught quick glimpses of John's face in the lights of the panel as I shifted my eyes fleetingly from the road. Rare to see a man confronted with a literal test of his religious beliefs. John shook his head. "Roland, it isn't simply a matter of―"
"Oh, come on, John," Roland said, impatient with his leader's recent behavior, or so it sounded. "How can you be so myopic? We're in Jake's Plan, he's in ours. You can't deny that there's some kind of linkage here. Can you?"
"Maybe," John said, eyes belying his words. "Possibly." He gave up. "God, I don't know. I really don't know what to do."
"I do," Roland said emphatically. "It's obvious. No matter what we do, our paths and Jake's seem to cross. I say we let Jake take the lead. It's clear his Plan is informing ours." Darla was pounding me on the shoulder. "Look out!"
A dark pool lay across the road. I braked hard, but it was useless. In no time we shot across the spontaneous bridge over a geothermal depression and were back on solid ice again. "Sorry, Jake. False alarm." "No, keep watching. I need four eyes." Roland was bent over the scanner again. Suddenly he spun around and peered back through the oval rear window. "Merte. I should have been watching. He's back there!"
Starrigger s-1 Page 15
