Only Steve Baxter had not turned to the east.
Alone among the contestants, he had swung north, towards the George Washington Bridge and Bear Mountain City. His mouth was tight, and he moved like a man in a dream.
In distant Larchmont, Adele Baxter was watching the race on television. Involuntarily, she gasped. Her eight-year-old son Tommy cried, "Mom, Mom, he's going north to the bridge! But it's closed this month. He can't get through that way!"
"Don't worry, darling," Adele said. "Your father knows what he's doing."
She spoke with an assurance she did not feel. And, as the figure of her husband was lost in the crowds, she settled back to wait — and to pray. Did Steve know what he was doing? Or had he panicked under pressure?
The seeds of the problem had been sewn in the twentieth century; but the terrible harvest was reaped a hundred years later. After uncounted millennia of slow increase, the population of the world suddenly exploded, doubled, and doubled again. With disease checked and food supplies assured, death rates continued to fall as birthrates rose. Caught in a nightmare geometric progression, the ranks of humanity swelled like runaway cancers.
The four horsemen of the Apocalypse, those ancient policemen, could no longer be relied upon to maintain order. Pestilence and famine had been outlawed, and war was too luxurious for this subsistence age. Only death remained — much diminished, a mere shadow of his former self.
Science, with splendid irrationality, continued to work insensately towards the goal of more life for more people.
And people marched on, still increasing, crowding the earth with their numbers, stifling the air and poisoning the water, eating their processed algae between slices of fish-meal bread, dimly awaiting a catastrophe to thin out their unwieldy ranks, and waiting in vain.
The quantitative increase in numbers produced qualitative changes in human experience. In a more innocent age, adventure and danger had been properties of the waste places — the high mountains, bleak deserts, steaming jungles. But by the twenty-first century most of these places were being utilized in the accelerating search for living-space. Adventure and danger were now to be found in the monstrous, ungovernable cities.
In the cities one found the modern equivalent of savage tribes, fearsome beasts, and dread disease. An expedition into New York or Chicago required more resourcefulness and stamina, more ingenuity, than those lighthearted Victorian jaunts to Everest or the source of the Nile.
In this pressure-pot world, land was the most precious of commodities. The Government parcelled it out as it became available, by means of regional lotteries culminating in Land Races. These contests were patterned after those held in the 1890s for the opening of the Oklahoma Territory and the Cherokee Strip.
The Land Race was considered equitable and interesting — both sporty and sporting. Millions watched the races, and the tranquillizing effect of vicarious excitement upon the masses was duly noted and approved. This in itself was sufficient justification for the races.
Additionally, the high mortality rate among the contestants had to be considered an asset. It didn't amount to much in absolute numbers; but a stifled world was grateful for even the smallest alleviation.
The race was three hours old. Steve Baxter turned on his little transistor radio and listened to the latest reports. He heard how the first group of contestants had arrived at the Holland Tunnel and had been turned back by armoured policemen. Others, more devious, had taken the long southern trek to Staten Island and were presently approaching the approaches of the Verrazzano Bridge. Freihoff St John, all by himself, flashing a deputy mayor's badge, had been allowed past the Lincoln Tunnel barricades.
But now it was time for Steve Baxter's gamble. Grim-faced, with quiet courage, he entered the infamous Free Port of Hoboken.
It was dusk on the Hoboken foreshore. Before him, in a sweeping crescent, lay the trim, swift ships of the Hoboken smuggling fleet, each with its gleaming Coast Guard medallion. Some already had cargo lashed to their decks — cases of cigarettes from North Carolina, liquor from Kentucky, oranges from Florida, goof balls from California, guns from Texas. Each case bore the official marking, "contraband-tax paid". For in this unhappy day and age, the hard-pressed Government was forced to tax even illegal enterprises, and thus to give them a quasi-legal status.
Choosing his moment carefully, Baxter stepped aboard a rakish marijuana runner and crouched down among the aromatic bales. The craft was ready for imminent departure; if he could only conceal himself during the short passage across the river ...
"Har! What in the hell have we here?"
A drunken second engineer, coming up unexpectedly from the fo'c'sle, had caught Baxter unawares. Responding to his shout, the rest of the crew swarmed on to the deck. They were a hard-bitten, swaggering lot, feared for their casually murderous ways. These were the same breed of Godless men who had sacked Weehawken some years ago, had put Fort Lee to the torch, had raided and pillaged all the way to the gates of Englewood. Steve Baxter knew that he could expect no mercy from them.
Nevertheless, with admirable coolness, he said, "Gentlemen, I am in need of transportation across the Hudson, if you please."
The ship's captain, a colossal mestizo with a scarred face and bulging muscles, leaned back and bellowed with laughter.
"Ye seek passage of unsT he declared in the broad Hobokenese patois. "Think "ee we be the Christopher Street ferry, hai?"
"Not at all, sir. But I had hoped—"
"To the boneyard wit" yer hopes!"
The crew roared at the witticism.
"I am willing to pay for my passage," Steve said with quiet dignity.
"Pay is it?" roared the captain. "Aye, we sometimes sell passages — non-stop to midstream, and thence straight down!"
The crew redoubled its laughter.
"If it is to be, then let it so be," Steve Baxter said. "I request only that you permit me to drop a postcard to my wife and children."
"Woife and tuck ins?" the captain inquired. "Why didn't yer mention! Had that lot myself aforetime ago, until waunders did do marvain to the lot."
"I am sorry to hear that," Steve said with evident sincerity.
"Aye." The captain's iron visage softened. "I do remember how, in oftens colaim, the leetle blainsprites did leap giner on the saern; yes, and it was roses all till diggerdog."
"You must have been very happy," Steve said. He was following the man's statements with difficulty.
"I maun do," the captain said heavily.
A bowlegged little forebow deckman thrust himself forward. "Hi, Captain, let's do for him and get underway before the pot rots on the spot."
"Who you giving orders at, ye mangy, scut-faced hogi-fier!" the captain raved. "By Big Jesus, we'll let the pot rot till I say not! And as for doing him — nay, I'll do one deed for me blainsprites, shiver me if I won't!" Turning to Baxter, he said, "We'll carry ye, laddie, and for naught ought loot."
Thus, fortuitously, Steve Baxter had touched upon a bittersweet memory in the captain's recollection and had thereby won respite. The marijuana men pushed off, and soon the sleek craft was breasting the sallow grey-green waves of the Hudson.
But Steve Baxter's respite was short-lived. In midstream, just after they entered Federal waters, a powerful searchlight flashed out of the evening gloom and an officious voice ordered them to heave to. Evil luck had steered them straight into the path of a destroyer on the Hudson patrol.
"Damn them!" the captain raved. "Tax and kill, that's all they know! But we'll show them our mettle! To the guns, bullies!"