IV
Calhoun was in very bad shape when the sports car came to the end ofthe highway.
First, all the multiple roadways of the route that had brought him herewere joined by triple ribbons of road-surface from the north. For aspace there were twenty-four lanes available to traffic. They flowedtogether, and then there were twelve. Here there was evidence of anenormous traffic concentration at some time now past. Brush and smalltrees were crushed and broken where cars had been forced to traveloff the hard-surface roadways and through undergrowth. The twelvelanes dwindled to six, and the unpaved area on either side showed thatinnumerable cars had been forced to travel off the highway altogether.Then there were three lanes, and then two, and finally only a singleribbon of pavement where no more than two cars could run side by side.The devastation on either hand was astounding. All visible vegetationfor half a mile to right and left was crushed and tangled. And then thenarrow surfaced road ceased to be completely straight. It curved arounda hillock--and here the ground was no longer perfectly flat--and cameto an end.
And Calhoun saw all the ground-cars of the planet gathered and parkedtogether.
There were no buildings. There were no streets. There was nothing ofcivilization but tens and scores of thousands of ground-cars. They wereextraordinary to look at, stopped at random, their fronts pointed inall directions, their air-column tubes thrusting into the ground sothat there might be trouble getting them clear again.
Parked bumper to bumper in closely placed lines, in theory twenty-fivethousand cars could be parked on a square mile of ground. But therewere very many times that number of cars here, and some places wereunsuitable for parking, and there were lanes placed at random andthere'd been no special effort to put the maximum number of cars inthe smallest place. So the surface transportation system of the planetMaya spread out over some fifty sprawling square miles. Here, cars werecrowded closely. There, there was much room between them. But it seemedthat as far as one could see in the twilight there were glisteningvehicles gathered confusedly, so there was nothing else to be seen butan occasional large tree rising from among them.
Calhoun came to the end of the surfaced road. He'd waited for thepellets he'd taken and given to Allison to have the effect they'd hadon Murgatroyd. That had come about. He'd driven on. But the strength ofthe inductor field had increased to the intolerable. When he stoppedthe sports car he showed the effects of what he'd been through.
Figures on foot converged upon him instantly. There were eager calls.
”It's stopped? You got through? We can go back?”
Calhoun shook his head. It was just past sunset and many brilliantcolorings showed in the western sky, but they couldn't put color intoCalhoun's face. His cheeks were grayish and his eyes were deep-sunk,and he looked like someone in the last stages of exhaustion. He saidheavily:
”It's still there. We came through. I'm Med Service. Have you got agovernment here? I need to talk to somebody who can give orders.”
* * * * *
If he'd asked two days earlier there would have been no answer, becausethe fugitives were only waiting for a disaster to come to an end. Oneday earlier, he might have found men with authority busily trying toarrange for drinking water for something like two millions of people,in the entire absence of wells or pumps or ways of making either.And if he'd been a day later, it is rather likely that he'd havefound savage disorder. But he arrived at sundown three days after theflight from the cities. There was no food to speak of, and water wasdrastically short, and the fugitives were only beginning to suspectthat they would never be able to leave this place--and that they mightdie here.
Men left the growing crowd about the sports car to find individualswho could give orders. Calhoun stayed in the car, resting from theunbearable strain he'd undergone. The ground-inductor cattle fencehad been ten miles deep. One mile was not bad. Only Murgatroyd hadnoticed it. After two miles Calhoun and Allison suffered; but themedication strengthened them to take it. But there'd been a long, longway in the center of the induction-field in which existence was puretorment. Calhoun's muscles defied him for part of every two-secondcycle, and his heart and lungs seemed constantly about to give up eventhe pretense of working. In that part of the cattle-fence field, he'dhardly dared drive faster than a crawl, in order to keep control ofthe car when his own body was uncontrollable. But presently the fieldstrength lessened and ultimately ended.
Now Murgatroyd looked cordially at the figures who clustered aboutthe car. He'd hardly suffered at all. He'd had half as much of themedication as Calhoun himself, and his body weight was only a tenthof Calhoun's. He'd made out all right. Now he looked expectantly atwhat became a jammed mass of crowding men about the vehicle that hadcome through the invisible barrier across the highway. They hopeddesperately for news to produce hope. But Murgatroyd waited zestfullyfor somebody to welcome him and offer him cakes and sweets, andundoubtedly presently a cup of coffee.
But nobody did.
It was a long time before there was a stirring at the edge of thecrowd. Night had fully fallen then, and for miles and miles in alldirections lights in the ground cars of Maya's inhabitants glowedbrightly. They drew upon broadcast power, naturally, for their motorsand their lights. Off to one side someone shouted. Calhoun turned onhis headlights for a guide. More shoutings. A knot of men struggled toget through the crowd. With difficulty, presently, they reached the car.
”They say you got through,” panted a tall man, ”but you can't get back.They say--”
Calhoun roused himself. Allison, beside him, stirred. The tall manpanted again:
”I'm the planetary president. What can we do?”
”First, listen,” said Calhoun tiredly.
He'd had a little rest. Not much, but some. The actual work he'd donein driving three hundred-odd miles from Maya City was trivial. Butthe continuous, and lately violent, spasms of his heart and breathingmuscles had been exhausting. He heard Murgatroyd say ingratiatingly,”_Chee-chee-chee-chee_,” and put his hand on the little animal to quiethim.
”The thing you ran away from,” said Calhoun with effort, ”is a type ofground-induction field using broadcast power from the grid. It's usedon Texia to confine cattle to their pastures and to move them wherethey're wanted to be. But it was designed for cattle. It's a cattlefence. It could kill humans.”
* * * * *
He went on, his voice gaining strength and steadiness as he spoke. Heexplained, precisely, how a ground-induction field was projected in aline at a right angle to its source. It could be moved by adjustmentsof the apparatus by which it was projected.
”But--but if it uses broadcast power,” the planetary president saidurgently, ”then if the power broadcast is cut off it has to stop!If you got through it coming here, tell us how to get through goingback and we'll cut off the power broadcast ourselves! We've got todo something immediately. The whole planet's here. There's no food!There's no water! Something has to be done before we begin to die!”
”But,” said Calhoun, ”if you cut off the power you'll die anyway!You've got a couple of million people here, and you're a hundred milesfrom food. Without power you couldn't get to food or bring it here. Cutthe power and you're still stranded here. Without power you'll die assoon as with it.”
There was a sound from the listening men around. It was partly a growland partly a groan.
”I've just found this out,” said Calhoun. ”I didn't know until the lastten miles exactly what the situation was, and I had to come here to besure. Now I need some people to help me. It won't be pleasant. I mayhave enough medication to get a dozen people back through. It'll besafer if I take only six. Get a doctor to pick me six men. Good heartaction. Sound lungs. Two should be electronics engineers. The othersshould be good shots. If you get them ready, I'll give them the samestuff that got us through. It's desensitizing medication, but it willdo only so much. And try and find some weapons for them.”
Voices murmured all around. Men hastily e
xplained to other men whatCalhoun had said. The creeping disaster before which they'd allfled,--it was not a natural catastrophe, but an artificial one! Menhad made it! They'd been herded here and their wives and children werehungry because of something men had done!
A low-pitched, buzzing, humming sound came from the crowd about thesports car. For the moment, nobody asked what could be the motive formen to do what had been done. Pure fury filled the mob. Calhoun leanedcloser to Allison.
”I wouldn't get out of the car if I were you,” he said in a low tone.”I certainly wouldn't try to buy any real property at a low price!”
Allison shivered. There was a vast, vast stirring as the explanationpassed from man to man. Figures moved away in the darkness. Lightedcar windows winked as they moved through the obscurity. The populationof Maya was spread out over very many square miles of what had beenwilderness, and there was no elaborate communication system by whichinformation could be spread quickly. But long before dawn there'd benobody who didn't know that they'd fled from a man-made danger and wereheld here like cattle, behind a cattle fence, apparently abandoned todie.
* * * * *
Allison's teeth chattered. He was a business man and up to now he'dthought as one. He'd made decisions in offices, with attorneys andsecretaries and clerks to make the decisions practical and safe,without any concern for any consequences other than financial ones.
He saw possible consequences to himself, here and now. He'd landed onMaya because he considered the matter too important to trust to anybodyelse. Even riding with Calhoun on the way here, he'd only been elatedand astonished at the success of the intended coup. He'd raised hisaim. For a while he'd believed that he'd end as the sole proprietorof the colony on Maya, with every plant growing for his profit, andevery factory earning money for him, and every inhabitant his employee.It had been the most grandiose possible dream. The details and themaneuvers needed to complete it flowed into his mind.
But now his teeth chattered. At ten words from Calhoun he wouldliterally be torn to pieces by the raging men about him. His attachecase with millions of credits in cash--it would be proof of whateverCalhoun chose to say. Allison knew terror down to the bottom of hissoul. But he dared not move from Calhoun's side, even though a singlesentence in the calmest of voices would destroy him, and he'd neverfaced actual, understood, physical danger before.
Presently men came, one by one, to take orders from Calhoun. They wereable-bodied and grim-faced men. Two were electronics engineers, as he'dspecified. One was a policeman. There were two mechanics and a doctorwho was also amateur tennis champion of the planet. Calhoun doledout to them the pellets that reduced the sensitiveness of muscles toexternally applied stimuli. He gave instructions. They'd go as far intothe cattle fence as they could reasonably endure. Then they'd swallowthe pellets and let them act. Then they'd go on. His stock of pelletswas limited. He could give three to each man.
Murgatroyd squirmed disappointedly as this briefing went on. Obviously,he wasn't to make a social success here. He was annoyed, and he neededmore space. Calhoun tossed Allison's attache case behind the seats.Allison was too terrified to protest. It still did not increase thespace left on the front seat between Calhoun and Allison.
Four humming ground cars lifted eight inches off the ground and hoveredthere on columns of rushing air. Calhoun took the lead. His headlightsmoved down the single-lane road to which two joining twelve-lanehighways had shrunk. Behind him, other headlights moved into line.Calhoun's car moved away into the darkness. The others followed.
Brilliant stars shone overhead. A cluster of thousands of suns, ahundred light-years away, made a center of illumination that gaveMaya's night the quality of a vivid if diffused moonlight. The carswent on. Presently Calhoun felt the twitchings of minor muscularspasms. He was riding into the field which had been first devised forpurposes remote from the herding of cattle or humans, but applied tothe first use on the planet Texia, and now applied to the second here.
The road became two, and then four, and then eight lanes wide. Thenfour lanes swirled off to one side, and the remaining four presentlydoubled, and then widened again, and it was the twelve-lane turnpikethat had brought Calhoun here from Maya City.