Hold tight.' She grabbed the driving sticks and demonstrated how to control the tracks. The vehicle slewed back and forth and around.
'How can you see out?'
Allison laughed. 'A nineteenth-century solution. Bend down a little further.' She tapped the hull above her head. Now he saw the shallow depression that ringed the driver's head, just above the level of her temples. 'Three hundred and sixty degrees of periscopes. The position can be adjusted to suit.' She demonstrated.
'Okay. You say Wili wants both the crawlers over to the banana wagons? I'll bring the other one.' She slipped out of the driver's seat and disappeared through the hatch.
Mike stared at the controls. She had not turned off the engine. All he had to do was sit down and
Straight ahead, Naismith stood by the wagons. The old man was tearing at the side panels, sending his 'precious bananas' cascading across the ground. To the left a puff of vapor came from the other armored carrier, and Mike heard Allison start its engine.
He looked past the lower edge of the periscope ring at the drive sticks. He touched the left tread control, and the carrier jerked incrementally till it was lined up on the wagons. Then he pressed both sticks, and he was moving forward! . Mike accelerated to what must have been six or seven meters per second, as fast as a man could run. It was just like in the games. The trip was over in seconds. He cautiously slowed the carrier to a crawl the last few meters, and turned in the direction Paul motioned. Then he was stopped. The turbine's keening went on.
Allison had already opened the rear of the other vehicle and was sliding the bulky electronics gear out onto the dirt. Mike wondered at the mass of equipment the Peacers seemed to need in these vehicles. All of Sy Wentz's police electronics would fit in one of the carriers with room to spare. 'Leave the comm and sense equipment aboard, Allison. Wili may be able to interface it.' While Allison concentrated on the equipment she knew, Mike and Paul worked to move Wili's processor and the Tinker communications gear out of the banana wagons.
The boy came out of the gutted wagon. He was off the system now, but still seemed dazed, his efforts to help ineffectual. 'I have used almost all, Paul. I can't even talk to the net anymore. If we can't use the generators on the these,' he waved at the carriers, 'we are dead.'
That was the big question. Without foreplanning there wasn't a chance, but Paul had brought power interfaces and connector cables. They were based on Allison's specs. If, as with many things, the Peacers had not changed the old standards, then they had a chance.
They could almost fool themselves that the morning was quiet and still. Even the insects were silent. The air around them got steadily brighter, yet the morning fog was still so thick that the sun's disk was not visible. Far away, much farther than the ridgeline, they heard aircraft. Once or twice a minute there was a muffled explosion. Wili had started the Tinker forces on their invasion of the Livermore Valley, but from the north edge, where he had told them to mass through the night. Hopefully the diversion would be some help.
From the corner of his eyes, Mike had the constant impression of motion half-seen, of figures all across the campground working at projects similar to their own. He glanced across the field and saw the reason for the illusion: Wili had cast dozens of bobbles of varying sizes, all in a few seconds' time after the big, overnight bobble had burst. Some must hold just one or two men. Others, like the ones he had put around the main civilian campsite and the Peacer outpost, were more than fifty meters across. And in every one of them he could see the reflections of the four of them, working frantically to finish the transfer before the Peacers down in the Valley realized that the one big bobble had already burst.
It seemed longer, but the work took only minutes. Leaving most of the power cells behind, they didn't have more than fifty kilos of hardware. The processor and the larger bobble generator went into one carrier, while their own satellite comm equipment and a smaller bobbler went into the other. It was an incongruous sight, the Tinker gear sitting small and innocent in the green-painted equipment racks. Allison stood up in the now-spacious carrier and looked at Paul. 'Are you satisfied?'
He nodded.
'Then it's smoke-test time.' There was no humor in her voice. She turned a switch. Nothing smoked; displays flickered to life. Wili gave a whoop. The rest of the interfacing was software. It would take unaided programmers weeks. Hopefully, Paul and Wili could do it while they were on the move.
Allison, Paul and Wili took one carrier. Mike — under protest — took the other. There was plenty of room for everyone and all the equipment in just one of the vehicles. 'They expect to see rovers in pairs, Mike. I know it.'
'Yes,' said Allison. 'Just follow my lead, Mike; I won't do anything fancy'
The two vehicles moved slowly out of the parking area, cautiously negotiating the field of mirrored tombstones. The whine of their engines drowned the sound of aircraft and occasional explosions that came from far beyond the ridgeline. As they neared the crest, the fog thinned and morning blue was visible. They were far enough from the parking area that — even without their electronics working — they might be mistaken for Peacers.
Then they were starting downward, past the last of the outer defenses. Soon they would know about the inner ones, and know if Allison's news, now fifty years old, was still the key to the destruction of the Peace.
THIRTY-SIX
Della Lu caught up on the situation reports as she ate breakfast. She wore a fresh jumpsuit, and her straight hair gleamed clean and black in the bright fluorescent lights of
