"Okay, crew, let's squeeze hydrogen."
I tromped the power pedal.
"Won't we be tipping our hand?" Carl wanted to know.
"I got a plan," I said.
"You're the general."
"Don't you forget it, soldier."
"Yes sir, General MacArthur."
"McCarthy? Who's that?"
"No, not McCarthy… Aw, never mind."
I thought a moment. "First World War?" I asked.
"Second," Carl said.
"Right. Knew I'd heard the name." I decided that now was as good a time as any. "Carl, when were you born?"
"August third, 1946."
After a moment, I said, "Serious?"
"Yeah."
"Right. Carl, I think I believe you."
"Why should I lie?"
Indeed.
"What abort what's-his-name… Yuri?"
"What's he doing?"
"Looks like he doesn't know what to do. Probably thinks we're trying to ditch him."
"We are, in a way. Actually, I'm really interested in what he does."
"Got you."
Sam said, "He's not calling us on the skyband, if that means anything."
"It might," I said. "Are you scanning back there for any pursuit?"
"Yup. Nothing so far."
"Want to send up a drone?"
"The terrain's pretty flat. Probably won't need it. Just what is your plan, if I may ask?"
"Don't really have one," I answered, "unless we can find a place to pull off-road and lay low."
"That might be a problem. Nowhere to hide out there―no hills or big rocks to speak of."
"I was thinking, though," I went on, "maybe we could go off-road far enough to lose ourselves visually in the smog, then power down and sit. Maybe just listen for passing traffic. If we hear anything go by, we wait a little and double back to the main road, take another portal."
"Damn good idea," Sam said. "Damn good idea. Son, you show half a brain now and then. Let's do that thing."
About five klicks down the road, we did that thing. Nothing showed on the scanners as we turned off, and the screens stayed clear until we shut everything down. We couldn't see the road, but the outside directional mike would betray anything passing. Yuri had silently followed us, driving what we now saw to be a blue and white Omnivan, a good double-threat road/off road vehicle. It looked battered and travel-weary, though still serviceable. The ports were caked with dust, but we could see two dim figures in the front seats.
We sat, listening to the low moan of the wind. Everyone was quiet.
About ten minutes went by. Then Sam said, "Ask Carl who he thinks will win the National League pennant this year."
"Hmph." I reached forward and tapped the main screen. "Juice up the scanners. Make one sweep uproad on low power."
Sam did so.
"Nothing," I said. "Not a ding-blasted thing. I thought for sure…"
"So did I," Sam said. "I'm also sure they would have scanned us taking the cutoff, if they were interested."
"Can't figure it. Maybe they were what Yuri thought they were-aliens in salvaged Terran vehicles."
"Looks that way."
I got on the horn. "Carl, who's going to win the National League Pennant this year?"
"Well, I'm a Dodger fan." He laughed. "Are you kidding? Baseball's one with the dodo, isn't it?"
"Last time I heard, they were restarting major-league play back in North America."
"Really? I hadn't heard."
"1946, huh?"
"Nineteen hundred and forty-six, A.D."
"I take it you were born on Earth."
"Yeah. Los Angeles, California."
"How did you get out here, one hundred fifty odd years later?"
"l was kidnapped by a flying saucer."
Chapter 16
Ask a stupid question.
Language is strange in what it carries as baggage through the centuries and what it lets drop by the wayside. Though the phrase "flying saucer" hasn't fallen into desuetude, its original meaning has fallen through the bottom. In contemporary usage, you get conked on the head and "see flying saucers," i.e. suffer temporary visual disturbances. "Get off your flying saucer" means quit deluding yourself and come back to reality. Ask anyone what a flying saucer actually is and you'll probably get a blank look, as you would if you asked what buck refers to in the phrase "pass the buck." (A hint: buck, in this instance, is not slang for dollar, a unit of defunct currency.)
Originally, "flying saucer" meant only one thing: an extraterrestrial spacecraft. If you believe the accounts of the period, Earth's skies virtually crawled with them from about the middle of the twentieth century to about the third decade of the twentyfirst, when the section of Skyway on Pluto was discovered. After that, reports of sightings tapered off. Officially and generically, these phenomena were termed "UFOs"―Unidentified Flying Objects. "Saucer" arose from the fact that many of the objects took the shape of airborne crockery. I know all this because I once prepared a term paper on popular delusions for a college course entitled "The Masses and Collective Consciousness." (I don't remember anything about the course itself, which I suspect is no great loss.)
Out here on the road between the worlds, people don't see flying saucers. They see all kinds of things: time-tripping doppelgangers of loved ones who have recently died, vehicles that are modern-day versions of the Flying Dutchman complete with spectral occupants, vehicles driven variously by Jesus Christ, Buddah, Zoroaster, Lao-tse, Krishna, John Lennon (I remember passing a beery evening in a road house a while ago, buzzing with a gaggle of Lennonites―a very interesting little sect), and assorted other chimeras, but not spaceships. Who needs spaceships when you can climb in your buggy and drive a hundred light-years?
Who needs spaceships, or rather starships? Answer: a race that does not have access to the Skyway.
"Carl, we have to talk," I said, "but we'd best defer it, much as I hate to."
"Right."
"Sam, give me the skyband, channel nineteen, on low power."
Sam did so and I said, "Yuri? This is Jake."
"Hello!"
"I suppose you're wondering what the hell we're doing."
"I take it you think there's reason to be cautious."
"Good guess. Sorry we didn't warn you, but I thought it best to maintain radio silence, at least on the skyband. Yuri, do you have random-shift multifrequency decoding gear?"
"Yes, we do."
"Good. Sam will set you up to receive on our security channel. Standby."
When that was done we all started up and headed back over the ice toward the Skyway, following out own trace through the slush. The ground was flat and it was easy going. But when we had the road in sight, Sam suddenly yelled.
"Got something on the scanners"
"We have time to double back?"
"No, it's doing Mach one-point-three. Must be a Roadbug."
"Another one?"
Sure enough, it was. We watched the silver beetlelike vehicle streak past, punching its way into the bank of smog downroad.
"Hey," Sam said, surprised. "He transmitted something at us. I've got it on ten-second-delay playback. Wait a sec… here it is."
"ACCESS TO THE NEXT SECTION IS FORBIDDEN. TURN BACK AT ONCE." The voice spoke in Intersystem. It has long been thought that Roadbugs can scan for life-readings of vehicle occupants to determine the appropriate language to use. (How do they learn the languages in the first place? No one's been able to figure that out.)
"Well," I said, "I am not about to argue with a Roadbug. Troop, left face."
I hung a left, got over onto the double-back track and brought the rig up to cruising speed, checking back to see if everyone had followed. They had.
But soon the scanners were painting oncoming traffic. Five blips, none of them in any hurry but keeping formation. They had an air of deadly business about them. I knew who they were.