"The only cargo I brought with me that I can think of is a book," said Chandler. "Weighs maybe a pound. You think I'm supposed to get on that plane?"
The man grunted non-committally.
"All right, suit yourself. Listen, is there any place I can get something to eat?"
The man considered. "Well, I guess we can spare you a sandwich. But you wait here. Ill bring it to you."
He went back to the truck. A moment later one of the others brought Chandler two cold hamburgers wrapped in wax paper, but would answer no questions.
Chandler ate every crumb, sought and found a wash-room in the wrecked building, came out again and sat in the sun, watching the loading crew. He had become quite a fatalist. It did not seem that it was intended he should die immediately, so he might as well live.
There were large gaps in his understanding, but it. seemed clear to Chandler that these men, though not possessed, were in some way working for the possessors. It was a distasteful concept; but on second thought it had reassuring elements. It was evidence that whatever the "execs" were, they were very possibly human beings or, if not precisely human, at least they shared the human trait of working by some sort of organized effort toward some sort of a goal. It was the first non-random phenomenon he had seen in connection with the possessors, barring the short-term tactical matters of mass slaughter and destruction. It made him feel, what he tried at once to suppress, for he feared another destroying frustration a touch of hope.
The men finished their work but did not leave. Nor did they approach Chandler, but sat in the shade of their truck, waiting for something. He drowsed and was awakened by a distant sputter of a single-engined Aerocoupe that hopped across the building behind him, turned sharply and came down with a brisk little run in the parking bay itself. From one side the pilot climbed down and from the other two men lifted, with great care, a wooden crate, small but apparently heavy. They stowed it in the jet while the pilot stood watching; then the pilot and one of the other men got into the crew compartment. Chandler could not be sure, but he had the impression that the truckman who entered the plane was no longer his own master. His movements seemed more sure and confident, but above all it was the mute, angry eyes with which his fellows regarded him that gave Chandler grounds for suspicion. He had no time to worry about that; for in the same breath he felt himself occupied once more.
He did not rise. His own voice said to him, "You. Votever you name, you fellow vit de book! You go get de book verever you pud it and get on dat ship dere, you see?" His eyes turned toward the waiting aircraft. "And don't forget de book!"
He was released. "I won't," he said automatically, and then realized that there was no longer anyone there to hear his answer.
Chandler retrieved the Gibran volume from where he had tossed it, turned and leaped out of the way. Another truck was racing toward them, gears racketing as the driver expertly down-shifted and brought it to a halt with a hiss of airbrakes. Chandler stared at the driver open-mouthed. The ten-wheeler was being driven by a girl of about fourteen.
She turned and shouted over her shoulder into the back of the truck, opened the door of the cab and jumped out. The side door of the truck swung open.
A girl of about eleven stood there. Behind her a young boy in a Scout uniform. They hopped to the ground and were followed by a dozen more, and another dozen, and more.
At least fifty children were piling out of that truck. Some were as young as ten, some as old as the girl driver. They were mixed boys and girls, about half and half. There were Japanese and Negroes, Mexicans and blue-eyed blonds. They formed into a ragged line and marched up the wheeled steps into the jet with a bird-twittering like the sound of a school bus on the way home.
Chandler followed them up the steps and turned to the loading crew standing by. They neither looked at him nor spoke. Inside the ship the children were larking and shouting about the rows of seats.
"What's going on?" Chandler asked.
"Shut up and get in." None of the men were looking at him. He couldn't even tell which one had spoken. All had the worried, angry, helpless expressions on their faces.
"Come on! Look, can't you at least tell me where we're going?"
"Get in." But one of them looked at him at last, for just a moment, then raised an arm and pointed. He pointed west, out toward the Pacific, and to ten million square miles of nearly empty sea.
No lighted sign ordered fastening seat belts, no stewardess handed herself down the aisle between the seats to check on cigarettes. The loading crew slammed down the door from the outside, and shouted through it for Chandler to dog it down. Pilot and copilot were aboard already, but the door to their compartment was locked and Chandler never saw them. As he was levering down the latches that held the door the plane started its engines, blipped them once, wobbled over to a taxi strip ... and took off. Just like that.
Chandler half fell into a seat and held on. The children shouted and sang, bouncing around the seats, pointing out the wrecked buildings of downtown Los Angeles as they slid by a few hundred feet under their wings. "Sit down!" Chandler shouted. "All of you! You'll get your necks broken" But it was useless. They didn't refuse to obey him. They simply didn't hear. The take-off was quicker and more violent than any commercial flight. They rocketed up at full power (there would be no complaints about the noise from householders below), turned tightly in a bank that threw the children, laughing and shouting, into each other in heaps, and leveled off over the Pacific.
Chandler felt his ears popping. He got up, holding on to the back of the seat across the aisle. It had been a long time since he had been in an airplane. For a moment he thought he might be airsick, but the moment passed. The children had no such worries. They were acting like a class trip as the plane headed into the sun.
He counted and discovered there were fifty-two of the children. They were all around him, squeezing past in the aisle, calling to each other; but they didn't speak directly to him, nor he to them. They were in the coach section of the plane.
Chandler explored. The connecting door to the first class compartment was closed, but it was only fabric on a skeleton of metal rods. Chandler did not debate the advisability of breaking his way in; he just kicked it open and squeezed through, while the children watched him, and laughed and whispered to each other.
Most of the first class seats had been removed. A thin scatter of crates and boxes were strapped to the floor. In the lounge section the divans were still in place, though, and Chandler cast himself down on one and closed his eyes.
He thought that it would be very easy to weep for Ellen Braisted. In a couple of hours she had come very close to him.
For that matter, he thought, turning his head to the back of the divan, the Orphalese were worth mourning too. Crazy, of course. A kinder term would be cultist. But out of their oddness had come an attempt to organize a life on a plan that worked.
Worked too well, for beyond doubt, the success of their defenses against the "flame spirits" was what had doomed them. The destruction of Orphalese was no lunatic caprice. It had been planned and methodically carried out, by a concerted effort involving at least a dozen ...