With suitcases dragging from each hand and the carry-all under one arm and the mass of newspapers under the other, he went down to his car.
And did he carefully inspect it to see if it had been set up with bombs? No! He just put his baggage in the back, the newspapers in the front seat, started up and started off. I had turned the volume down in case there was an explosion.
He went up to U.S. 495 and, tooling along comfortably, got onto U.S. 95 and, at a leisurely fifty-five, rolled across the beautiful leafy green of Maryland, admiring the trees and fields and not even glancing into the rear-view mirror to see if he was tailed. That beauty he was impressed by was deceptive. I knew there was death waiting on that road!
He got into Delaware, admiring it down to the last huge barn. I didn’t know why he was looking so thoroughly at all these chicken factories with their huge signs. Snipers wouldn’t be concealed in them. Then suddenly a truck — glaringly labelled Delaware Chickens Corp. — swerved around to get ahead of him (he was dawdling), and he drove up so close to it he almost rammed it and then hung hard on its tailgate. It was a truck full of live chickens and he was looking them all over.
“So,” he muttered, “that’s what a chicken is!”
Hopeless! Absolutely hopeless!
Past Greater Wilmington Airport, he turned to the right onto the huge Delaware River Bridge. But was his mind on his business? No!
He stopped his car! Halfway across the span, disregarding traffic and horns and brake squeals, he stepped on his brakes!
A trailer-truck slued sideways frantically and blocked all lanes!
He got out. He left his car right there in the right lane, motor running, and got out! He gave only the slightest glance to the pandemonium he had abruptly caused.
He went over to the bridge rail and looked down at the Delaware River.
“Holy, jumping blastguns!” he said in Voltarian. Just like that!
And what was he looking at? He was looking down at the brown, roiling water. And what was there to see? Nothing but oil slicks and old floating tires and dead cats. Of course, I will admit the Delaware River is pretty big as rivers go and it looks bigger as at this point it becomes Delaware Bay and then part of the Atlantic.
The huge truck driver that had almost rammed the Cadillac now couldn’t get out because of the stacked up traffic. He came roaring at Heller, shaking his fists. I only saw him on peripheral vision. Heller wasn’t looking at him. He was looking northeast, up the river. The noise was absolutely deafening. Honking horns and angry yells and this truck driver. I had to turn down the gain.
Heller ignored the raised fists and profanity coming at him. Right into the middle of a tirade about “you (bleeped) kid,” Heller said, “Is there a city up there?”
“Jesus!” exploded the truck driver. “Where the hell are you from?”
And Heller was so intent on whatever he was thinking about, he said, “Manco.”
Then, into the middle of an “I don’t care if you’re from hell” sort of thing, Heller said, “I asked you, is there a city up this river?” Yikes! It was his piercing, high-pitched Fleet voice! I hastily lowered the gain some more.
The truck driver said, “Philadelphia, you (bleeped), ignorant…”
And into the middle of that, Heller pierced, “Is this their sewer?”
“Of course it’s their God (bleeped) sewer!” screamed the enraged truck driver.
“Jesus,” said Heller in English. And he just ignored the man and the crowd and the fists and went back and got in his car and drove on.
Heller was shaking his head. “Must be a hundred million people in that town and no sewer system. POH-LLU-SHUN! Jesus!”
As I say, he wasn’t tending to business. Any passing sniper could have shot him.
But I had him now. He had actually told an Earth-man where he was actually from! I started to write it down and then thought I had better reread Code Number a-36-544 M Section B. I dimly remembered it could be interpreted as “making an alien aware that a landing had taken place on his planet.” I couldn’t be sure. Had the truck driver been aware of Heller’s definitive answer? I couldn’t find the book.
When I sat down to watch again, Heller was on the New Jersey Turnpike, tooling along at fifty-five. He was relaxed once more. He had all his windows up and the air conditioning on, so it must be a hot day.
The traffic was very jammy. This turnpike is one of the most overloaded highways in the world, carrying almost triple what it was designed for and despite the high price of gasoline and cars and consequent traffic reduction, the trucks were clogging its dozen lanes. Oranges from Florida seemed to be the biggest part of what Heller was trying to flow along with.
He drove for some time and then, possibly because he thought oranges might have an odor — a trailer had evidently been strewing the road with them after a collision — he opened his window.
He sniffed.
Suddenly he shook his head as though to clear it.
He sniffed again.
Then he sneezed!
Well, of course he sneezed. The state of New Jersey, particularly along the turnpike, has one of the highest air pollution concentrations in the world. I could have told him that. Everybody knows it.
Trucks or no trucks, he fished out a notebook and wrote some percentages of sulphur dioxide and some other symbols I don’t know, but probably all noxious.
He closed his window. And then he said to the planet in general, “You’re going to have to use hacksaws pretty soon even to get a plane to move through this stuff! How can you manage to do it so fast? This area is .06 percent up even since my survey.”
He drove for a while and then he said, “I better get busy.”
But it was miles later before he acted. And what he did made no sense at all.
He went through the lousiest tail-shaking procedure I have ever seen!
Somehow he had gotten ahead of the mobs of Florida oranges. Before him lay miles of two lanes, totally empty. It was completely flat — there is no scenery on this turnpike — it was without turns.
Despite the solemn warnings of Stupewitz and Maul-in, he suddenly tramped on the accelerator and zipped the car up to ninety miles an hour! I thought, at last he’s gotten some sense! He’s trying to get away!
It wasn’t as fast as he could go. If he was trying to escape, he really should have stamped on it!
He sailed along, looking in his rearview mirror.
He was in plain view! This was no way to escape!
He clocked off three miles.
Then, still in full view, almost as if he wanted to be seen, he paid a toll and drove out through an exit gate.
He stopped. He backed the car over to the side where it could not be seen. And he just sat and watched the gate.
After a bit, he got one of the newspapers and began to read, looking up from time to time at the gate.
He found one story that fascinated him. It was in the New York Daily Scum:
Mucky Hack, veteran investigative reporter and crime exposer of the Daily Libel, was splattered all over 34th Street last night when his specially built Mercedes-Benz Phaeton was rigged for a blitz that went BOOM!