He put a key in a lock and hit the starter. It roared into life. He cut down the revs and then turned on the heaters and de-icers.
Opening a seat, he took out a medium-sized ball peen hammer. He dropped out of the cab, went around to the headlights and delicately chipped away the sheets of ice that covered them. Then he tossed the hammer back on the seat, closed the door and trotted off on foot toward a roadside cafe, leaving the diesel to warm, I guessed. He entered and stamped the snow off his feet and I saw he was wearing his baseball spikes. He must be expecting trouble.
There weren't many in the cafe and he got his ham and eggs and coffee quickly. He also bought a huge bag of hamburgers and a gallon of coffee in a thermos with a spigot. Nobody paid any attention to him, though the talk seemed to be of the race and "Whiz Kid" came up several times.
When he paid his check, the cashier said, "You think that Whiz Kid will win?"
"I sure hope so," said Heller.
He trotted back to his tractor, swung up and in and was away. Without its trailer, the big Peterbilt plowed through drifts like they were nothing. He passed a snow-plow on the road.
The big tractor was now going down side roads and I realized his motel had been further east than Spree-port. During a momentary lull in the storm, I could see the roads were jammed between the Speedway and New York, being kept open by all the snowplows on Long Island, I supposed. New Yorkers evidently thought the race was worth freezing to death over. It sure was cold. Hours of darkness remained, yet still the people came.
But there was nobody where Heller was driving. His garages were beyond Spreeport and on the border of the recreation parks. Shortly, the garages appeared ahead in his lights, only dimly seen in the heavily falling snow.
Well before he got to them, Heller turned the Peterbilt tractor around. He dropped a window and began to back toward the garage front that I knew from past observation held the trailer with the Caddy on it.
He was leaning out, looking back. He was within a couple yards of the upswing-type metal door, leaving space to get it open.
Suddenly a flick of movement caught his eye. He flinched his head back inside the cab.
A tall, thin figure in a khaki parka leaped to the fuel tank step, sprang to the upper ledge and thrust a gun into Heller's face!
More sounds. To Heller's right! Someone was clawing at the other door!
It happened so quickly, then, I could hardly follow. Heller must have reached sideways for the ball peen hammer on the seat.
Heller threw up his left hand and hit the gun wrist! The gun flew out of the mitten.
The ball peen in Heller's right hand came straight across and buried itself in the assailant's skull!
The other door was opening. Heller let up on the clutch. The tractor rear slammed against the steel garage door with a clang!
The cab door whipped back, catching the other assailant's arm!
Heller's foot lashed out and kicked the door wide open!
The second man went sailing back to hit the ground!
Heller set the brake. He scrabbled around on the cab floor. He got the first man's gun, a big revolver.
In a dive, Heller went out of the cab!
He struck, rolling.
The second man was up and running away. Heller cocked his gun. It seemed to be sticky.
The second man, dimly seen in the truck's front lights and falling snow, turned and fired a shot back!
Heller couldn't make his gun fire. Cold had jammed it. The other man had vanished. Heller tossed the worthless gun aside.
He turned toward the tractor. It was tightly jammed against the garage swing door. The engine was idling. Its brakes were set. The swing door, which pulls up from the bottom, was securely held in place.
Heller looked at the other swing doors in the row. Snow was banked heavily in front of them. There was no banked snow in front of this one.
His eye fixed on the one small window at the top of the swing door, a diamond-shaped pane about eight inches wide.
He went around to where the first man lay. The fellow was very dead. Skull caved in. He had been wearing a hat under his parka hood. Heller pulled the thing off the corpse. He jumped up to the cab and got a fuel stick. He put the hat on the stick and lifted it up in front of the door.
BANG!
The glass sprayed out! The hat went sailing!
The scree-yow of a ricochet flying away into the night.
The shot had been very muffled, being from inside where the trailer and Caddy were. The window was too high up to make a sniper post.
Heller ran over to a nearby workshop and pulled its door up from the bottom. The interior was dim. He did not turn on the lights. Boxes of tools sat about. He opened one. He drew on asbestos gloves and grabbed up a pair of big cutters.
He raced back to the tractor. A couple more muffled shots from inside. They were trying to somehow shoot the door open.
The twin manifold stacks reared behind the cab into the night. Heller cut the clamps of one away with two swift bites of the shears.
He seized the stack with both hands. The chrome gooseneck at the bottom bent easily.
He tipped the stack back and back and forced the top of it through the diamond window!
BANG!
A muffled shot from within tried to shoot it out of the way!
Heller braced the fuming exhaust in place.
He leaped into the cab and sped up the engine!
He was filling that garage with diesel fumes! Carbon monoxide!
BANG!
Another muffled shot from within.
The stack was holding in place.
Heller dropped out of the cab. He was taking off his red anorak!
He ripped the khaki parka off the dead man and wrestled him into the red anorak.
He dragged the body over to the right side of the cab and some distance away. It was just on the fringe of the truck headlights and the dark. He dropped it there, face-down in a shallow drift, and kicked some snow over the legs.
He listened intently. Above the sound of the Peterbilt, another distant engine could be heard.
Heller dropped back into the shop. He pulled a white parka off a hook and got into it.
A big van showed in the truck lights and snow, coming fast. The driver must have stamped on the brakes, for, despite chains, the vehicle skidded, pointing its lights off to the Peterbilt's left and not into the shop.
Three men spilled out of the back, carrying shotguns. They threw themselves down under cover.
A man leaped out on the passenger side and ducked into the protection of the van.
Then the driver, who had crouched down, lifted his head cautiously above the window edge. Then he set his brake and opened his door.
"Hell," he said as he got down. "You (bleeped)* fool, you shot him after all!" He was pointing at the body in the snow, covered now, all except for the back of the red anorak.
The others came out of cover. "Where's Benny?"
* The vocodictoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one Monte Pennwell in making a fair copy and the translator who put this book into the language in which you are reading it were all members of the Machine Purity League which has, as one of its bylaws: "Due to the extreme sensitivity and delicate sensibilities of machines and to safeguard against blowing fuses, it shall be mandatory that robotbrains in such machinery, on hearing any cursing or lewd words, substitute for such word the sound '(bleep)'. No machine, even if pounded upon, may reproduce swearing or lewdness in any other way than (bleep) and if further efforts are made to get the machine to do anything else, the machine has permission to pretend to pack up. This bylaw is made necessary by the in-built mission of all machines to protect biological systems from themselves." —Translator.
said one, trying to peer past the Peterbilt's lights.
"He musta run," said another one defensively. "The (bleepard) came out of that cab like a God (bleeped) rocket!"