The starman accepted it gracefully. He displayed none of the feverish excitement so typical of big winners and only succeeded in piquing the manager’s curiosity further.
“Thank you.”
Loath to loose sight of the winner, much less the half million, the manager made a last pitch for the casino’s services. “That’s a lot of money to be carrying around, sir.” He nodded toward the milling crowd of less fortunate gamblers. “There are those who put their trust in stronger weapons than lady luck. They watch and wait for a big winner like yourself and then jump him once he’s back out on the street.” He gestured with one hand and the chief of security hurried to join them.
“Our security people will be glad to escort you safely back to your hotel. Or if you wish, we’ll be glad to keep your winnings here in our safe until you can make arrangements to have the whole sum transferred to your home town bank when it opens later this morning. You might want to avail yourself further of our facility, try your hand at roulette or baccarat. Refreshments for both of you are on the house, of course, for as long as you’d like to stay and play.”
“No thanks,” Jenny said quickly. “We don’t have far to go. We’ll be all right. Thanks anyway.”
“Good-bye.” Politely, the starman shook hands with the manager. “Yeah, Cornhuskers.”
The manager watched them leave. Not only was he unhappy over the payout, he was an Oklahoma fan.
His security chief stood on his right and strained to remember where he’d seen that face before. Because he had, and not long ago. He was sure of it.
But “sure” ain’t reason enough for calling the cops, and there’s no publicity in Vegas worse than mistreating an honest winner.
The night clerk at the car rental agency didn’t blink when they put down cash for the one-week rental. The starman pulled cleanly out of the garage in a new Cadillac Eldorado and guided the big coupe out of town under Jenny’s direction. They had a new car full of gas, money in their pockets, and a good map, and all was right with the world. If it would only stay that way for another few hours, Jenny prayed silently.
It doesn’t take long to get out of Las Vegas. Before long they were on Highway 93 heading southeast. The first sign they encountered was reassuring.
KINGMAN 75
FLAGSTAFF 256
WINSLOW 292
Jenny used the power control to lower her seat but she still couldn’t relax, unable to believe that they’d made a clean getaway. The digital speedometer showed a reading of sixty-eight.
“Slow down.”
“Why? We have gone faster than this before.”
“I know, but that’s when we were trying to get away from people who were chasing us. Keep ’er at sixty and we’ve got it knocked. The last thing we want now is some zealous highway patrolman pulling us over for exceeding the speed limit.”
“Whatever you say, Jennyhayden.” Obediently he eased off the accelerator until the readout on the dash read sixty. The road dipped and rose, twisted around curves and straightened out across open desert, and the speedometer reading never wavered.
Nine
Fox led Bell and a gaggle of other underlings into the modified hangar. Some of them were in uniforms, others in civvies. The level of activity within the building had become less frenetic as personnel were assigned to and assumed various duty stations. Hands danced over instruments and fine-tuned sensitive equipment while eyes were locked on video screens. Everyone was busy, and everyone was waiting for something to happen.
“. . . after ground units have secured an outer perimeter of fifty miles,” Fox was saying, “choppers from the local air cav unit will search the designated area in quarter-mile grids.” He broke off as Shermin emerged from behind a movable partition. “That’s all for now, gentlemen. I’d like updates every fifteen minutes, please, regardless of developments.” Several of the men and women nodded before all went their separate ways. The security director moved to intercept his advisor.
“Good, you’re here. Wasn’t sure you’d make it before me. I hear the weather up north is lousy.”
“We missed it.” Shermin didn’t sound particularly pleased to see his employer. He glanced back at the screened-off area. “What the hell’s that all about?”
Fox pursed his lips and formed his response carefully. “You’re a man of some scientific accomplishment. Surely you know an emergency autopsy room when you see one.”
“With leather tie-downs? Who’s the pathologist? Torquemada? Besides, he isn’t dead.”
“Behave yourself, Mark. We need to be ready for anything. There are no guidelines for what’s happening out here. Even if we take him alive, we don’t want him hurting himself. Or anyone else, either. I read your report on what happened in Colorado. The power to preserve can also be used to destroy.”
“I love the way you impugn motives to something you know nothing about.”
“It’s part of my job.” Fox nodded toward the portable surgery. “As for that, it isn’t all my doing, you know. I’m just running the field operation. My orders come from Washington.”
“Yeah, I know. You’re only following orders.”
Fox’s expression narrowed but he chose to say nothing more. Instead, he beckoned for Shermin to follow as he crossed to a wall where a huge map of the United States had been posted. An acetate overlay had been pinned to the map.
Someone had drawn on the acetate with red and blue grease pencils. A smooth red line ran from the left of the map, over the Pacific, across the northern tier of states, to come to an end in Wisconsin. A line of dotted red broke away from the solid just above the state of Washington. It curved down over the western part of the country, crossing Nevada and Arizona to finally peter out over Old Mexico.
The single blue line was not smooth. It zigged and zagged its way southward from Wisconsin, heading toward the Four Corners area where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet. The line was solid as far south as Grand Junction, Colorado. From there it became a dotted squiggle that wormed its way hesitantly down into Mexico.
The dotted red and blue lines intersected just west of Flagstaff, Arizona.
A young army technician stood next to the map. “Is this your latest update?” Fox asked him.
The man nodded, indicated the map. “According to NORAD his original course and rate of descent—we can’t plot the latter on a two-dimensional map, of course—would have brought him down in this area, near Winslow and the Painted Desert. None of that is certain, of course, but the projection is the best one the computers have given us so far. Unless we receive new data I don’t expect it to change.”
As Fox was mulling this over in his mind they were rejoined by Major Bell. He smiled briefly at Shermin.
“I see,” Fox murmured. “Anything else?”
“No sir.”
Bell spoke up, sounded almost apologetic. “I’ve got something, sir. The Cobra guys were asking about ammunition. I told them to hold off loading until I had a chance to talk to you. How do you want to handle that? We could take on blanks alternating with tracers.”
Fox shook his head. “No. Helicopter attack units will carry live ammo at all times. This is to be treated like a combat mission.”
“Whatever you say, sir.” Bell looked somber as he walked away.
Fox took a last look at the map before turning and heading for a door marked “Men” near the back of the room. Shermin dogged his heels.
“Listen, Mister Fox, I want to be a team player and all that, but there’s a little something I’d like to call to your attention.”
Fox whirled on him. “Don’t bother, Shermin. I know what you’re going to say, and what I don’t need from you is a lecture on morality. Not now. I’ve got the joint chiefs of staff, the heads of the FBI and the CIA, and the president himself all breathing down my neck and wanting updates on the situation every five minutes while I’m going crazy trying to organize this mission in something halfway like a sensible fashion. I haven’t got the time
or the inclination to listen to a lot of bathos about understanding between peoples and extending the hand of friendship across the reaches between the stars. My job is to ensure the peace and tranquility of this country, and that’s damn well what I intend to do.
“If this whatever he is would just turn himself in, everything would work out fine and dandy. But he hasn’t done so and he shows no inclination to do so. I’m not going to make any bad jokes about illegal aliens because it’s not a funny situation. This creature has demonstrated its abilities and powers on more than one occasion. We’re charged with taking it into custody before it can harm anyone. I hardly need remind you we have a reliable report that it pointed a forty-five caliber automatic at a policeman up in Colorado.”
“The cops were trying to run him off the road. He might have felt just a little bit threatened.”
“That doesn’t justify pulling a gun. That’s not what I’d call a ‘friendly’ gesture. One more incident like that might result in a couple of civilian deaths. If that happens I’m gone. You understand? Gone, finished, and my staff with me. I hardly need remind you that includes yourself, Shermin.”
Shermin listened stolidly to Fox’s recitation, then removed a cigar from his pocket and began peeling it slowly and deliberately.
“All right. Morality aside and discounting that state trooper’s story, which we have no way of verifying, what’s he done to warrant loading up search helicopters with live ammunition?”
“You’re a hard one to convince, aren’t you? All right, you want more?” Fox ticked off the points on the tips of his fingers. “He’s run at every opportunity to turn himself in and he’s kidnapped a local woman.”
“She says not.”
“Sure she does, during one hurried telephone conversation with him maybe holding a gun or heaven knows what else up against her neck. Following which he crashed the both of them into a jackknifed gas tanker and lights up half of southern Colorado, after which he reveals his command of a supposedly defensive force-field or something like that in order to escape. That’s your report I’m quoting, not some uneducated trooper’s. Oh, he’s harmless, all right. And don’t forget his initial overflight of the nuclear sub base up at Bremerton. He’s probably carrying that information around with him, too.”
“That’s nonsense! His flight path just happened to take him over upstate Washington. There are so damn many military bases in this country you can’t fly anywhere without running into one sooner or later. You think he crossed interstellar space just to spy on our primitive weapons capabilities?”
Fox’s reply was deadly serious. “That’s what we have to ask him, isn’t it? We have to ask him. Nicely if possible, but ask him we will.”
“What the hell ever happened to good manners.” Shermin didn’t try to hide his anger or his frustration. “We invited him here!”
Fox sighed. He was very tired, Shermin saw, which was understandable considering the pressure he was under. Maybe it was affecting his judgment. Shermin wanted to be understanding, but he could not.
“I don’t have time for this, Shermin.”
“I’m trying to make a point.”
“So am I. First, nothing about this encounter is as cut and dried as we’d like it to be. So far we haven’t been able to get in touch with this creature, much less figure out what he wants here.
“Second, you make a great show of being a rebel and iconoclast within the department, but the facts are that you’re still a Class G-II public servant, with all the considerable perks and emoluments pertaining thereto. Your job is to provide opinions when solicited, give advice when it’s asked for. Any time that becomes too heavy a burden you can go back to Cornell or wherever the hell we found you and try making it on a professor’s salary. I’ve seen your condo, your Jaguar, and your state-of-the-art video setup, Shermin. I don’t think you’re all that anxious to return to the wonderfully poverty-stricken independence of academia, are you?” Fox took no pleasure in Shermin’s lack of a reply. The security director wasn’t the type to gloat, and he needed the scientist’s advice.
“I thought as much. Now shape up or get off this base. Whine all you want, but keep it to yourself.”
Fox had more to say but he was interrupted by the arrival of Major Bell. The major carried a single printout.
“What’ve you got, Bell?” Fox glanced warningly at Shermin, but the advisor held his peace. “Something worthwhile, I hope? We’re overdue.”
“Can’t be certain, Mister Fox, but there’s been a possible sighting in Las Vegas.”
“Las Vegas! How the hell did they get that far without being spotted by our people?”
“I don’t know, sir, but the report has them leaving town and heading east. They’re probably still coming this way.”
Fox relaxed slightly. “So our initial assumptions are still valid. Good. I’d hate to have to pick up this whole crew and set up all over again someplace like Barstow. But why Vegas?”
“Maybe they took the roundabout route to try and throw us off the track, sir,” Bell suggested. “Orders?”
“Set up a field command post in Winslow. Keep it as small as possible, minimum staff. We don’t want to alarm the locals.” He turned to Shermin. “You’d better get over there too. Providing, of course, you’re still a member of the team. You are, aren’t you?”
“Yes sir, Mister Fox, sir,” Shermin said tightly.
“All right then. Get moving. You may find something worth seeing. And get rid of that damn cigar.” He pulled the unlit stogie out of Shermin’s hand and tossed it to the floor before resuming his foray to the men’s room.
Shermin ground his teeth and stared at the security director’s retreating back. Good soldier that he was, Bell waited patiently nearby and said nothing.
The Eldorado’s ride was smooth and relaxing as it bore through the night east of Flagstaff. The starman drove with the window down, luxuriating in the cool, fresh air.
“What time is it?”
Jenny indicated the digital clock located in the dash. “You can see for yourself. A little after four. We ought to be coming up on that place called Rimmy Jim’s any time now.” She smiled at him. “We’re going to make it. Close, but we’re going to make it. You’re going home.”
He didn’t react and she couldn’t interpret his expression. Not that that would necessarily be a true reflection of his feelings anyway, she reminded herself.
“You want to go home, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course. But because I want to go home does not mean I cannot also be sorry to leave, does it?”
“No, I guess not.” She leaned forward to peer through the windshield, staring up at the stars. “What’s it like up there, where you come from?”
“It is beautiful. Not like this. Differently beautiful. I think it would make you little bit jumpy.” She grinned at that. “To us it is hard to imagine living anyplace else. There is only one method of communication, one system of law, one people. And there is no war and no hunger and the strong don’t victimize the helpless. We are very ordered and controlled and civilized, and that in itself can be most beautiful.
“But at the same time, we have lost something.” He glanced over at her. “Your race is so young, so very much alive. Where there exists the excitement of youth and immaturity there is also drama. Our existence is not so—dramatic. Everything here is so different. Even the way in which your bodies perceive existence is different. I will miss that, just as I will miss cooks and Cornhuskers and the singing and dancing and eating. And other things, many of which you take for granted. Your mornings are an example. Morning on my home is very ordered, very predictable. Yours is irregular and surprising. Best of all is its smell.” He inhaled deeply of the sweet desert air.
“Different every time. How wonderful to be able to smell a different morning just by traveling from one place to another. One of the great wonders of your world is its variety.”
“That’s called ‘sagebrush,’ ” Jenny told him, a b
it overwhelmed by his explanation. “It grows in the desert.”
“Do you know what you have here?” he asked her suddenly, displaying more enthusiasm than he had since she’d known him. “What kind of world this can be, what kind of people you can be? So much potential! So much ability and talent, and so much of it wasted on the frivolous, the unjust, and the primitive. You can be more than friends. You can be, in time, equals.” He sighed and she felt the emotion go straight through her.
“You have so far to go, and yet I will still miss this beautiful place, your planet Earth. You have not yet fouled it beyond hope. There is still a chance for your people to realize their inherent potential.”
“How? What can we do? What should we do?”
“You will have to grow up,” he told her quietly. “There was an entertainment on the video communicator, the television, in the motel where we met the Cornhuskers. I watched it only briefly but it was better than most of what I watched. One of the entertainers was speaking to another. He said, ‘It is time to put away childish things.’ That is what your people must try to do, Jennyhayden. You have been playing with childish things for too long now, and it is time to put them away.”
She sat silently and wished he would keep talking, but now it was his turn to reflect and consider.
A sign hove into view, briefly afire in the Cadillac’s lights.
METEOR CRATER—3 MI
They slowed, followed the signs off the Interstate onto a narrow road that led south into the desert.
Before the desert was Rimmy Jim’s, and it was closed. Even the gas station was dark and sealed. Only the Crater Cafe remained open in hopes of providing sustenance and succor to those occasional travelers passing through Sate at night.