The rocket to K.C. was well filled; I had to sit beside another passenger, a well-built chap in his middle thirties. We looked each other over as I sat down, then each busied himself with his own affairs. I called for a lap table and started straightening out the order blanks and other papers I had accumulated during busy, useful days in Cincinnati. He lounged back and watched the news broadcast in the TV tank at the forward end of the car.
I felt a nudge about ten minutes later and looked around. My seatmate flicked a thumb toward the television tank; in it there was displayed a large public square filled with a mob. It was surging toward the steps of a massive temple, over which floated the Prophet's gold-and-crimson banner and the pennant of a bishopric. As I watched, the first wave of the crowd broke against the temple steps.
A squad of temple guards trotted out a side door near the giant front doors and set up their tripods on the terrace at the head of the wide stairs. The scene cut to another viewpoint; we were looking down right into the faces of the mob hurrying toward us-apparently from a telephoto pick-up somewhere on the temple roof.
What followed made me ashamed of the uniform I had once worn. Instead of killing them quickly, the guards aimed low and burned off their legs. One instant the first wave was running toward me up the steps-then they fell, the cauterized stumps of their legs jerking convulsively. I had been watching a youngish couple right in the center of the pick-up; they had been running hand in hand. As the beam swept across them they went down together.
She stayed down. He managed to lift himself on what had been his knees, took two awkward dying steps toward her and fell across her. He pulled her head to his, then the scene cut away from them to the wide view of the square.
I snatched the earphones hanging on the back of the seat in front of me and listened: "-apolis, Minnesota. The situation is well in hand and no additional troops will be needed. Bishop Jennings has declared martial law while the agents of Satan are rounded up and order restored. A period of prayer and fasting will commence at once.
"The Minnesota ghettos have been closed and all local pariahs will be relocated in the reservations in Wyoming and Montana in order to prevent future outbreaks. Let this be a warning to the ungodly everywhere who might presume to dispute the divine rule of the Prophet Incarnate.
"This on-the-spot cast by the No-Sparrow-Shall-Fall News Service is coming to you under the sponsorship of the Associated Merchants of the Kingdom, dealers in the finest of household aids toward grace. Be the first in your parish to possess a statuette of the Prophet that miraculously glows in the dark! Send one dollar, care of this station-"
I switched off the phones and hung them up. Why blame the pariahs? That mob wasn't made up of pariahs.
But I kept my lip zipped and let my companion speak first-which he did, with vehemence. "Serves them right, the bloody fools! Imagine charging against a fortified position with your bare hands." He kept his voice down and spoke almost in my ear.
"I wonder why they rioted?" was all that I answered.
"Eh? No accounting for the actions of a heretic. They aren't sane."
"You can sing that in church," I agreed firmly. "Besides, even a sane heretic-if there could be such a thing, I mean-could see that the government is doing a good job of running the country. Business is good." I patted my brief case happily. "For me, at least, praise the Lord."
We talked business conditions and the like for some time. As we talked I looked him over. He seemed to be the usual leading-citizen type, conventional and conservative, yet something about him made me uneasy. Was it just my guilty nerves? Or some sixth sense of the hunted?
My eyes came back to his hands and I had a vague feeling that I should be noticing something. But there was nothing unusual about them. Then I finally noticed a very minor thing, a callused ridge on the bottom joint of the third finger of his left hand, the sort of a mark left by wearing a heavy ring for years and just the sort I carried myself from wearing my West Point class ring. It meant nothing, of course, since lots of men wear heavy seal rings on that finger. I was wearing one myself-not my West Point ring naturally, but one belonging to Reeves.
But why would this conventional-minded oaf wear such a ring habitually, then stop? A trifling thing, but it worried me; a hunted animal lives by noticing trifles. At the Point I had never been considered bright in psychology; I had missed cadet chevrons on that issue alone. But now seemed a good time to use what little I had learned . . . so I ran over in my mind all I had noticed about him.
The first thing he had noticed, the one thing he had commented on, was the foolhardiness of charging into a fortified position. That smacked of military orientation in his thinking. But that did not prove he was a Pointer. On the contrary, an Academy man wears his ring at all times, even into his grave, even on leave and wearing mufti . . . unless for some good reason he does not wish to be recognized.
We were still chatting sociably and I was worrying over how to evaluate insufficient data when the stewardess served tea. The ship was just beginning to bite air as we came down out of the fringes of space and entered the long glide into Kansas City; it was somewhat bumpy and she slopped a little hot tea on his thigh. He yelped and uttered an expletive under his breath. I doubt if she caught what he said.
But I did catch it-and I thought about it furiously while I dabbed at him with a handkerchief. "B. J. idiot!" was the term he used and it was strictly West Point slang.
Ergo, the ring callus was no coincidence; he was a West Pointer, an army officer, pretending to be a civilian. Corollary: he was almost certainly on a secret service assignment. Was I his assignment?
Oh, come now, John! His ring might be at a jeweller's, being repaired; he might be going home on thirty days. But in the course of a long talk he had let me think that he was a business man. No, he was an undercover agent.
But even if he was not after me, he had made two bad breaks in my presence. But even the clumsiest tyro (like myself, say) does not make two such slips in maintaining an assumed identity-and the army secret service was not clumsy; it was run by some of the most subtle brains in the country. Very well, then-they were not accidental slips but calculated acts; I was intended to notice them and think that they were accidents. Why?
It could not be simply that he was not sure I was the man he wanted. In such case, under the old and tested principle that a man was sinful until proved innocent, he would simply have arrested me and I would have been put to the Question.
Then why?
It could only be that they wanted me to run free for a while yet-but to be scared out of my wits and run for cover . . . and thereby lead them to my fellow conspirators. It was a far-fetched hypothesis, but the only one that seemed to cover all the facts.
When I first concluded that my companion must be an agent on my trail I was filled with that cold, stomach-twisting fear that can be compared only with seasickness. But when I thought I had figured out their motives I calmed down. What would Zebadiah do? "The first principle of intrigue is not to be stampeded into any unusual act-" Sit tight and play dumb. If this cop wanted to follow me, I'd lead him into every department store in K.C.-and let him watch while I peddled yard goods.
Nevertheless my stomach felt tight as we got off the ship in Kansas City. I expected that gentle touch on the shoulder which is more frightening than a fist in the face. But nothing happened. He tossed me a perfunctory God-keep-you, pushed ahead of me, and headed for the lift to the taxicab platform while I was still getting my pass stamped. It did not reassure me, as he could have pointed me out half a dozen ways to a relief. But I went on over to the New Muehlbach by tube as casually as I could manage.
I had a fair week in K.C, met my quota and picked up one new account of pretty good size. I tried to spot any shadow that might have been placed on me, but I don't know to this day whether or not I was being trailed. If I was, somebody spent an awfully dull week. But, although I had about concluded that the incident had been nothing but imagination and my
jumpy nerves, I was happy at last to be aboard the ship for Denver and to note that my companion of the week before was not a passenger.
We landed at the new field just east of Aurora, many miles from downtown Denver. The police checked my papers and fingerprinted me in the routine fashion and I was about to shove my wallet back into my pocket when the desk sergeant said, "Bare your left arm, please, Mr. Reeves."
I rolled up my sleeve while trying to show the right amount of fretful annoyance. A white-coated orderly took a blood sample. "Just a normal precaution," the sergeant explained. "The Department of Public Health is trying to stamp out spotted fever."
It was a thin excuse, as I knew from my own training in P.H.-but Reeves, textiles salesman, might not realize it. But the excuse got thinner yet when I was asked to wait in a side room of the station while my blood sample was run. I sat there fretting, trying to figure out what harm they could do me with ten c.c. of my blood-and what I could do about it even, if I did know.
I had plenty of time to think. The situation looked anything but bright. My time was probably running out as I sat there-yet the excuse on which they were holding me was just plausible enough that I didn't dare cut and run; that might be what they wanted. So I sat tight and sweated.
The building was a temporary structure and the wall between me and the sergeant's office was a thin laminate; I could hear voices through it without being able to make out the words. I did not dare press my ear to it for fear of being caught doing so. On the other hand I felt that I just had to do it. So I moved my chair over to the wall, sat down again, leaned back on two legs of the chair so that my shoulders and the back of my neck were against the wall. Then I held a newspaper I had found there up in front of my face and pressed my ear against the wall.
I could hear every word then. The sergeant told a story to his clerk which would have fetched him a month's penance if a morals proctor had been listening-still, I had heard the same story, only slightly cleaned up, right in the Palace, so I wasn't really shocked, nor was I in any mood to worry about other people's morals. I listened to several routine reports and an inquiry from some semi-moron who couldn't find the men's washroom, but not a word about myself. I got a crick in my neck from the position.
Just opposite me was an open window looking out over the rocket field. A small ship appeared in the sky, braked with nose units, and came in to a beautiful landing about a quarter of a mile away. The pilot taxied toward the administration building and parked outside the window, not twenty-five yards away.
It was the courier version of the Sparrow Hawk, ram jet with rocket take-off and booster, as sweet a little ship as was ever built. I knew her well; I had pushed one just like her, playing number-two position for Army in sky polo-that was the year we had licked both Navy and Princeton.
The pilot got out and walked away. I eyed the distance to the ship. If the ignition were not locked-Sheol! what if it was? Maybe I could short around it, I looked at the open window. It might be equipped with vibrobolts; if so, I would never know what hit me. But I could not spot any power leads or trigger connections and the flimsy construction of the building would make it hard to hide them. Probably there was nothing but contact alarms; there might not be so much as a selenium circuit.
While I was thinking about it I again heard voices next door; I flattened my ear and strained to listen.
"What's the blood type?"
"Type one, sergeant."
"Does it check?"
"No, Reeves is type three."
"Oho! Phone the main lab. We'll take him into town for a retinal."
I was caught cold and knew it. They knew positively that I wasn't Reeves. Once they photographed the pattern of blood vessels in the retina of either eye they would know just as certainly who I really was, in no longer time than it took to radio the picture to the Bureau of Morals & Investigation-less, if copies had been sent out to Denver and elsewhere with the tab on me.
I dove out the window.
I lit on my hands, rolled over in a ball, was flung to my feet as I unwound. If I set off an alarm I was too busy to hear it. The ship's door was open and the ignition was not locked-there was help indeed for the Son of a Widow! I didn't bother to taxi clear, but blasted at once, not caring if my rocket flame scorched my pursuers. We bounced along the ground, the little darling and I, then I lifted her nose by gyro and scooted away to the west.
8
I let her reach for the sky, seeking altitude and speed where the ram jets would work properly. I felt exalted to have a good ship under me and those cops far behind. But I snapped out of that silly optimism as I leveled off for jet flight.
If a cat escapes up a tree, he must stay there until the dog goes away. That was the fix I was in and in my case the dog would not go away, nor could I stay up indefinitely. The alarm would be out by now; behind me, on all sides of me, police pilots would be raising ship in a matter of minutes, even seconds. I was being tracked, that was sure, and the blip of my craft on several screens was being fed as data into a computer that would vector them in on me no matter where I turned. After that-well, it was land on command or be shot down.
The miracle of my escape began to seem a little less miraculous. Or too miraculous, perhaps? Since when were the police so sloppy that they would leave a prisoner in a room with an unguarded window? Wasn't it just a little too much of a coincidence that a ship I knew how to herd should come to that window and be left there-with the ignition unlocked-just as the sergeant said loudly the one thing that would be sure to make me try for it?
Maybe this was a second, and successful, attempt to panic me. Maybe somebody else knew my liking for the Sparrow Hawk courier, knew it because he had my dossier spread out in front of him and was as familiar with my sky polo record as I was. In which case they might not shoot me down just yet; they might be counting on me to lead them straight to my comrades.
Or perhaps, just possibly, it was a real escape-if I could exploit it. Either way, I was neither ready to be caught again, nor to lead them to my brethren-nor to die. I had an important message (I told myself); I was too busy to oblige them by dying just now.
I flipped the ship's commer to the police & traffic frequency and listened. There was some argument going on between the Denver port and a transport in the air but no one as yet was shouting for me to ground or get my pants shot off. Later perhaps-I left it switched on and thought.
The dead-reckoner showed me some seventy-five miles from Denver and headed north of west; I was surprised to see that I had been in the air less than ten minutes . . . so hopped up with adrenalin, no doubt, that my time sense was distorted. The ram-jet tanks were nearly full; I had nearly ten hours and six thousand miles at economy cruising-but of course at that speed they could almost throw rocks at me.
A plan, silly and perhaps impossible and certainly born of desperation but even so better than no plan at all, was beginning to form in my brain. I consulted the great-circle indicator and set a course for the Republic of Hawaii; my baby nosed herself slightly south of west. Then I turned to the fuel-speed-distance gnomograph and roughed a problem-3100 miles about, at around 800 mph, ending with dry tanks and depending on rocket juice and the nose units to cushion a cold-jet landing. Risky.
Not that I cared. Somewhere below me, shortly after I set the autopilot on the indicated course and speed, analyzers in the cybernetwork would be telling their human operators that I was attempting to escape to the Free State of Hawaii, on such a course, such an altitude, and at max speed for that range . . . and that I would pass over the Pacific coast between San Francisco and Monterey in sixty-odd minutes unless intercepted. But interception was certain. Even if they were still playing with me, cat and mouse, ground-to-air snarlers would rise up from the Sacramento Valley. If they missed (most unlikely!), manned ships as fast or faster than my baby, with full tanks and no need to conserve radius, would be waiting at altitude at the coast. I had no hope of running that gauntlet.
Nor did I intend t
o. I wanted them to destroy the little honey I was pushing, destroy her completely and in the air-because I had no intention of being aboard when it happened.
Operation Chucklehead, phase two: how to get out of the durn thing! Leaving a jet plane in powered flight has all been figured out by careful engineers; you slap the jettison lever and pray; the rest is done for you. The survival capsule closes down on you and seals, then the capsule with you in it is shot clear of the ship. In due course, at proper pressure and terminal air speed, the drogue is fired; it pulls your chute open, and there you are, floating comfortably toward God's good earth, with your emergency oxygen bottle for company.
There is only one hitch: both the capsule and the abandoned ship start sending out radio signals, dots for the capsule, dashes for the ship, and, for good measure, the capsule has a built-in radar-beacon.
The whole thing is about as inconspicuous as a cow in church.
I sat there chewing my thumb and staring out ahead. It seemed to me that the yonder was looking even wilder and bluer than usual-my own mood, no doubt, for I knew that thirteen ground miles were slipping out from under me each minute and that it was high time for me to find my hat and go home. Of course, there was a door right alongside me; I could strap on a chute and leave. But you can't open a door in a ramjet plane in powered flight; nor do you jettison it-to do so will cause the plane to behave like a kicked pup. Nor is an eight-hundred mile-an-hour breeze to be ignored even at 60,000 feet; I'd be sliced like butter on the door frame.
The answer depended on how good an autopilot this buggy had. The better robopilots could do everything but sing hymns; some of the cheaper ones could hold course, speed, and altitude but there their talents ended. In particular I wanted to know whether or not this autopilot had an emergency circuit to deal with a case of "fire out," for I intended to stop the ship, step out, and let the ship continue on in the direction of Hawaii by itself-if it could.