But Kobol was already saying, “I don’t care what you do to yourself, your personal grudges are your business, not mine. But to risk the rest of those men without even giving them a chance…”
“Save your speeches for the Council, Martin. Tell them I’m following their prime directive: I’m going to get the fissionables.”
The time lag between their statements was turning the conversation into two separate monologues. “And there’s medicine,” Kobol was saying, but more calmly now. He was more in charge of himself, obviously thinking fast while he spoke, “You’ll be exposing those men to all the diseases of Earth…”
“I want to talk to my mother now,” Alec said.
“Please put her on.”
“Your inoculations won’t keep you protected…” Kobol stopped, then answered, “Your mother’s busy preparing for the Council meeting. By the time we could get her here to the communications center the satellite would be below your horizon and out of range.”
“Very well. Arrange for her to call me tomorrow.”
The pause again. Alec could sense Kobol’s mind churning furiously during the hiatus. “I’ll tell her. In the meantime, I must warn you again that you should not endanger your men foolishly. The Council won’t look favorably on any rash action. You should stay where you are until we’ve decided on the next step.”
“Too dangerous,” Alec countered. “We’ve already been trapped here once. I don’t want to allow that to happen again.”
Kobol’s voice was starting to fade. “Your orders are to stay where you are.”
Smiling tightly, “No good, Martin. We’re in much greater danger here than we will be on the move. I’ll expect a call tomorrow. From my mother. Now I’m going to put Gianelli back on. Give him the ephemerides for the satellite, so we’ll know when you’re in contact range.”
Alec pulled the earphones off his head and handed them to Gianelli. “Quick, before the satellite gets out of range.”
Gianelli took the earphones with a slight, quizzical grin. “Gonna make heroes out of us,” he muttered.
Jameson said nothing. Alec left the truck and went searching for Will Russo. Halfway back to the campfire he spotted the big redhead striding toward him.
“Looking for you,” Will said.
There was something about the man, his big gangling gait, the way his arms swung loosely at his sides, the innocent grin on his face—Alec found it impossible to distrust him.
“I’ve been looking for you, too,” Alec said.
“Have you been in touch with your people?”
Will hiked a thumb skyward.
“Yes. If you don’t mind, I’d like to travel north with you. I want to find my father.”
Will’s grin broadened. “Good. Good. I just got a message from him. He’s only a few klicks—eh, kilometers—from here, in a town named Coalfield.”
“Here?” Alec suddenly felt weightless, all the breath knocked out of him.
“Yep.” Will nodded happily. “We can be there in a couple of hours.”
Chapter 17
Alec scarcely noticed the countryside rolling past as he sat on the fender of the lead truck, heading for the town where his father waited for him.
They came down out of the ridges and woods, all of his own men and all Russo’s people riding on the trucks. They bumped onto a paved road; not a wide concrete highway like the one between Oak Ridge and the airport, but a narrow, twisting blacktopped road, cracked and potted beyond description.
Weeds and grass sprouted in every crevice.
Behind him Alec could hear Gianelli talking with Angela. “You mean you walk all the time?” he was asking. “Carrying all your food and guns and all?”
She sounded almost amused. “Sure. We ride when we can find something to ride on. There aren’t many cars or trucks still running—just a few electrics that run on solar batteries. Not much fuel left for gas-burners.”
“So you walk?” There was amazement in Gianelli’s voice. “And you carry everything on your backs.”
“Unless we can find horses or other pack animals. I covered five hundred klicks on a cow last year, when I hurt my leg.”
“Which one?”
“The right.”
“Looks pretty good now.” Gianelli’s voice had a leer in it.
“It’s fine. And you can keep your hands off!”
Alec turned and said evenly. “There could be five hundred raiders in those trees. Play some other time.”
Gianelli’s face reddened and his mouth squeezed down into a hard line. But he moved away from the girl. Angela looked at Alec for a wordless moment. Then he turned away.
Up ahead he could see the first buildings of the town. His hands suddenly felt clammy, shaky. He tightened his grip on the edge of the fender with one hand, shifted the machine pistol’s belt across his shoulder with the other. He’s here. Somewhere among these buildings… Every sense in him peaked, brightened. Alec could hear his pulse throbbing in his ears, feel his breath quicken. He’s here! But deep within him, something was telling him to run, to get away, anything but this one place. Journey across the whole face of the planet, travel back to the Moon, get away, anywhere, anyplace.
Yet he was impatient to meet the man he had come to find.
Alec knew from his history tapes that this was a small town. Yet it still dwarfed the lunar community. All these buildings, aboveground, out in the open! And their variety: one floor, three ^floors, brick fronts, wooden slats, something that looked like stone blocks. Windows staring down at him, empty, mysterious, dark. Street after street after street, branching and intersecting every hundred meters or so.
But empty. Dead. No one lived here. No one was on the streets. No vehicles. Nothing in sight except the silent buildings and wind-blown dust billowing through the empty streets.
He looked across to Will, perched on the opposite fender.
“Town’s been deserted since the sky burned,”
Will said. “People come by once in a while, but nobody lives here permanently. Too tough to grow food here; too hard to defend the town against raiders.”
“How do you know which building my father’s in?”
Will grinned hugely. “Oh, Douglas’ll be in his usual place.”
It turned out to be a one-story red-brick building with a sign spanning its width: U.S. POST OFFICE — COALFIELD, TENN.—33719.
Will suggested that the trucks be spread around the building in a defensive perimeter. Alec passed the order on to Jameson, then the truck he was on trundled into the parking lot behind the Post Office building. Nestled under a protective overhang sat a squarish, squat, open-topped vehicle.
Alec recognized it from his teaching tapes as a jeep.
As he climbed down from the truck, Alec wondered where his father found the fuel to propel a jeep. If he can cover long distances in it, then he must have fuel depots spotted along the way. Then Will Russo came around, grabbed Alec by the arm and ushered him through a doorway that had long ago lost its door.
It was dark inside. They walked down a narrow corridor, turned a corner.
And there he was.
He was standing in the center of a big room, surrounded by empty shelves and broken, shattered wooden desks and tables. The roof was partially gone, so the sunlight streamed in, dust motes drifting lazily in the still air. The room was large and open, but Douglas Morgan seemed to fill it. He was big, hulking, broad-shouldered and thick-bodied.
Will Russo was almost as big, Alec realized.
But where Will was a grinning, happy oversized puppy, Douglas Morgan was a towering, lumbering gray bear.
His face was square-jawed and strong, with iron-gray hair rising in a bristling shock from his broad forehead and framing his powerful jaw with an iron-gray spade-shaped beard. His blue eyes were like gunmetal. They stared straight at Alec now, unblinking, pinning him where he stood.