There were only two cars in the parking lot. One had police writing all over it; the other was very sleek-looking in an odd kind of way, white with fiery decals on the front and a winglike contraption on the back. It was Lisa's Firebird. Zarex climbed in behind the wheel of the car; he'd fished the keys out of Lisa's jacket pocket soon after she collapsed. As Hunter and Tomm piled into the backseat, Zarex tried to figure out exactly how to insert the keys into the ignition. It took a few moments, but finally the key went into the slot.
Nothing happened.
Zarex pulled the key out and put it back in again.
Still nothing…
"What infernal machine is this?" he roared. "Surely these things tap into its power supply!"
Lights were blinking on all over the police station now. And the alarm was ringing even louder.
"Manipulate the key, brother!" Tomm yelled to Zarex.
That's when Zarex realized the key had to be not only inserted into the ignition but turned as well. As soon as he did this, the car's engine roared to life. Hunter reached forward and pulled the control stick down to the initial D, and off they went.
Wheels screeching, tires burning rubber, they peeled out onto the street in front of the police station, knocking over a line of trash cans in the process. Zarex didn't know how to drive; he was having trouble just keeping the wheel straight while pushing the accelerator to the floor. The result was a high-speed, careening journey down Main Street, sideswiping several parked cars and running two red lights. They were making so much noise, store alarms were popping on as soon as they roared past. Zarex took a sharp comer at the intersection of Elm and Main, creaming a park bench and taking down a no parking sign as well. Finally, they swerved onto Route 67A and took off toward the west. Though it had not been as subtle as they would have liked, they had not met any other vehicles since thundering out of the police station parking lot, and none were in pursuit.
Zarex managed to keep the car fairly straight on the road now and was intent on making the needle, which indicated their speed, climb to the far end of its limit, which was 160 miles per hour.
Only once he'd achieved this speed did Hunter and Tomm finally sit back and relax for a moment.
"We're safe now," Tomm said with a sigh of relief.
They drove for about twenty miles.
It was almost midnight. Traveling through the particularly isolated part of southwestern Illinois, they saw no other cars on the little-used highway nor any structures except for a few scattered barns and sheds. There were immense fields of alfalfa and wheat on either side of the straight, flat road. The winds rippled across these fields in such a way, they made the stalks move like waves on an ocean. Just above the roadway itself, a thick but shallow mist had gathered. Rain clouds hung low overhead. This was called inclement weather, Tomm reminded them. A rarity in most places, and in some parts of the Galaxy, it didn't exist at all.
Zarex had finally gotten the hang of operating the Firebird. Just keep the wheel steady and the pedal to the floor; it was really as simple as that. Yet the car did not ride very smooth at its maximum speed; this surprised them, as did the motor, which seemed a hundred times noisier than the power generator on any spacecraft they'd been in.
While putting distance between them and Betaville was an immediate priority, there was something even more urgent pressing on their minds. Their violent landing on this planet had come just after dawn, so they'd yet to glimpse this world's night sky. And that was the problem. They had told the Betaville cops the truth about one thing: They had no idea where they were. Not a clue. All that day, during their interrogation, they had yearned for night to fall just so they could see the stars and get a reading on their galactic location. Now it was dark again, and the rain clouds were finally beginning to break up ahead of them. So even though the police might be coming over the next hill in high pursuit, the three fellow travelers knew they had to stop and study the sky the first chance they got.
Spotting a fairly high hill ahead, Zarex pulled to the side of the road and killed the engine. All they could hear now was the wind. Suddenly, it was howling. They climbed out of the car and found the clouds above them were moving away very quickly. Strangely, it was getting very bright out. They climbed a wire fence, then forded a small stream before reaching the base of the hill. Scrambling up to the summit, they found the clouds were blowing away in every direction now, magically revealing the night sky for the first time.
"Am I seeing things?" Zarex was the first to gasp, shielding his eyes from the glare. "Or does this before us seem alien and unreal?"
That it did. Unlike the black-magic planet of Myx, the sky here was absolutely filled with stars. From horizon to horizon to horizon, there seemed to be nothing but stars. More stars than black space in between. More stars than it would seem possible, especially in the middle of the sky, where there were so many clustered together, they seemed to create one gigantic orb of light.
They had never seen anything like this.
"My God," Tomm breathed. "Where can we be?"
The three travelers had no idea. But it was important that they find out. Before being arrested, they'd given their personal items to Pater Tomm, hoping the police would not frisk someone who looked like a priest, which they did not. This was how they had been able to retain their various quadtrols and Twenty 'n Six boxes. Zarex pulled out his quadtrol now and scanned the vast, star-studded sky above them. He looked at the initial readings and let out a long, astonished groan.
"No wonder no one in the Five-Arm knew where this place was," he said finally. "It's because we're not on the Five-Arm anymore."
Hunter and Tomm didn't like the sound of that.
"If not the Five-Arm, then where are we, brother?" Tomm asked him anxiously.
Zarex pushed some more buttons; again it took a few mo-merits for the calculations to bounce back to him.
"Goodness," he breathed. "Can this be accurate?"
He turned the quadtrol around so they could both see.
"If this is correct," he said. "We're not on any arm at all."
Hunter and Tomm just stared back at him. Not on any arm?
"Nor are we inward, near the Ball," Zarex continued. "We are at neither place."
"Is that possible?" Hunter asked.
Zarex just shrugged. "Certainly every known star in the Galaxy is located either on the arms or in the Ball, or very close by. Yet, if my quadtrol is to be believed, we are at neither point in space."
He paused and looked up again. "In all my years, I've never seen a sky such as this."
But why did the sky look so thick with stars? Hunter was the first to spit out a theory. Because the Galaxy was flat and spiral, they were used to looking through one of the arms toward the center. Could it be that they were actually somewhere looking down onto the Milky Way, so the stars were not spread before them on a straight plane, but instead literally filled up the sky?
"An interesting conjecture," Zarex said. "Except top or bottom, there aren't any systems anywhere near the area we would have to be. It is supposed to be totally empty space; the gap between us and the other galaxies—"
"But dear God, it's the only explanation!" Tomm cried. "As crazy as it may seem."
This was all becoming very unsettling for Zarex. As a lifelong star shooter, it was a bit frightening not knowing exactly where he was. Even in his longest explorations, he'd always left from a familiar starting point, knowing he could always return to the same.