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.
'To the rear, march,' Sam said.
'Didn't Yuri say he spotted four Terran buggies?' I said as I swung the rig into a wide U-turn.
'He did.'
'It may mean one of 'em is alien.'
'Now, I wonder who they could be.'
Sam knew as well as I. Reticulans.
'What'll we do?' Sam asked. 'Can't shoot the portal. Go off-road again?'
'Yeah. Looks like they don't want to close with us. If we can lose them off the screen?do they have a drone up?'
'Don't see one.'
'Good. Let's get off the road and make like rocks again. Maybe we can fool them.'
'We'll be the most prominent feature of the landscape, should they be looking for us.'
'I dunno,' I said. 'I thought I saw some large rock formations off to our right when we were parked. Maybe the lay of the land changes farther down.'
It didn't, and our pursuers kept pace with us as we raced toward the tollbooths. We were doing top speed. There was no way we could outrun them and our alternatives were dwindling to a very few.
'Should we turn and fight?' Sean asked. 'Liam and I are game if you are.'
Carl said, 'Are they really following us, or are we just getting paranoid? Maybe they're not the same vehicles Yuri saw.'
'The thought has occurred to me,' I said. 'Could be we're just a little too jumpy. Want to pull over and see if
