particles, too.' He shook his head. 'But why? What needs to be protected here?'
'Maybe the fact that we're in a different region of the galaxy has something to do with it,' I suggested. Then I shrugged.
'Who knows? And who cares, for that matter?' I folded my arms, snuggled into the seat and closed my eyes. 'I'm going to try to catch a wink or two.'
'You do that,' Sam said cheerily. 'Nothing to eyeball out there anyway. Best to let me handle it.'
So I did for about the next ten minutes. I didn't sleep, though. The matter of what happened to the Green Balloon reasserted itself, and I realized something. The technology of Carl's automobile was at least equal to if not greater than the technology of the Roadbuilders. This was nothing less than a revelation. Such a state of affairs was unprecedented in the known sections of the Skyway. The technological achievements of the Roadbuilders were generally thought to be unequalled in the universe. No one had any hard evidence in support of the notion, but there was an intuitive feel of truth to it. The portals were impossible constructs, yet they existed. It was difficult to conceive that the race who had created them had not had mastery of the basic forces of the universe.
Fact: Cruising along behind us was an artifact, a machine, which had neutralized a Roadbuilder security mechanism.
Fact: The owner, or supposed owner, of this artifact was a twenty-year-old human being who claimed to have been born on Earth over one hundred and fifty years ago, and who also claimed to have been shanghaied by some sort of time-traveling extraterrestrial spacecraft.
Fact: The artifact was in the form of an antiquated vehicle, specifically that of a 1957 Chevrolet Impala (!).
Supposition: The occupants of the extraterrestrial spacecraft had built the artifact according to its present owner's specifications and quite possibly at his behest. (Carl had said only that 'aliens' had built his automobile, but based on what Carl had implied, the inference that his captors had built it for him was easy enough to draw, unless I was misremembering.)
Item: Carl talked, acted, and appeared to be who and what he said he was: an American of the twentieth century displaced in time and space. (Not a fact, but a series of observations.)
Hypothesis: Carl was kidnapped by the Roadbuilders.
But to what end? Insufficient data.
Hypothesis: Carl was abducted by beings who had no direct access to the Skyway and who had developed interstellar space travel.
Why? To check out the Skyway.
Why did they bag Carl? They needed a spy.
Huh?
This was getting me nowhere. Obviously a long talk with Carl was in order. Until then…
Something out there against the star-field… black shapes outlined in glowing gas…
Sam swung us hard to starboard before I could grab back the controls.
'You saw it too, huh?'
'Yeah! Jesus.'
We had been approaching the portal array from the side. You ought not to do that sort of thing.
'Well,' I said, 'we're off the beaten path, if there is one.'
'Now we know that Roadbugs don't need roads,' Roland commented.
'Here's a question,' Sam said. 'How are we going to shoot a portal without a straight road for an approach path, a guide lane, commit markers, and the rest of it, when we can't even see the cylinders?'
'Carl's instruments can probably handle it,' I said. 'I hope. Let's ask him.'
I got on the horn and did.
'No problem,' Carl said confidently. 'This car has ways of detecting cylinders nobody else has.'
The cylinders are tricky things to read. They suck up just about everything in the way of electromagnetic radiation and emit almost nothing that can be picked up without sensitive laboratory equipment. This side of the commit point, however, you can register small tidal stresses that can give you a fairly good idea of how to approach the portal. Personally, I don't trust most commercial instrumentation. I have relied on instruments when weather conditions have dictated it, but in those instances the orientation signals from the commit markers had made things fairly easy. Here, there were no commit markers. I had never negotiated a portal on cylinder-scanning instruments alone.
We sailed on into the starlit night for a while, discussing the ramifications of Carl's automobile's astonishing capabilities. Roland and John agreed that the car's technology had to be a match for the Roadbuilders'.
'But who could the manufacturers have been?' John said. 'Some race in the Expanded Maze? The Ryxx, perhaps?'
'The Ryxx have starships,' I said, 'but rumor has it that they're fusion-powered sub-lightspeed crafts.'
'That would explain the time-traveling aspect of Carl's story,' Roland said, 'but if the Ryxx are limited to sub-lightspeed technology, they couldn't have built Carl's buggy.'
'I would tend to think not, but there's no way of knowing. Maybe faster-than-light travel is impossible, just like Einstein said. From what I know of recent work in theoretical physics, Relativity's been taking quite a beating, but no one's been able to deliver a knockout blow yet.'
'Well, 'beating' may not be the appropriate word,' Roland said. 'Most of the last century has been spent trying to reconcile Relativity with twistor theory and other such things.
Actually?'
'HANG ON!' Sam yelled.
The rig veered sharply to the left, the G-forces nearly snapping my neck. Just as we were straightening out, a black shape shot across our bow, visible for the barest fraction of a second before it vanished into the half- light.
'What the hell was that?' I asked after my heart had resumed beating.
'A Roadbug,' Sam told me. 'Doing around Mach three. Never seen one go quite that fast.'
'Where the hell was he going? Holy smokes, that was close!'
'I don't know where he was going, but I do know he's turning to come after us.'
'Step on it, Sam.'
'Will do.'
'Jake, what was that thing?' It was Carl.
I checked the rearview screen and saw three pairs of headlights maneuvering back into formation. 'Sorry about the sudden course change, folks, but we almost got creamed by a Roadbug.'
'Guess he wonders what the heck we're doing here,' Carl said.
'Very likely,' I answered. 'I don't think we can outrun him. Maybe we should stop and tell him we're lost, act innocent.'
'Could he know about what we did to the barrier? I suppose not, huh?'
'Don't see how, but I'm a little nervous about what he'll do in any event.'
'Me, too. He could just decide to zap us.'
'Eventually, maybe, but he'll conduct a quickie trial first?ask us how we got here.'
'What'll we say? Best get our stories coordinated.'
'We'll just say, 'What barrier? We didn't see any barrier!' or words to that effect. In fact, let's not say anything except that we're lost and we had no idea this was a forbidden zone. Got it? Sean, Yuri?are you listening?'
They were.
'Is the Roadbug listening?' Sean asked pointedly.
'Oh, God, who knows what they can do,' I said. 'I've never heard one speak English, which means nothing. But I'm fairly sure even they can't decipher cross-band frequency-shift scrambling based on random number generation unless they have the reassemble code.'
'Makes sense.'
'Should we pull over then?' Carl asked. 'He's completed his turn… vectoring in on us now.'
'I don't see what choice we have,' I said. 'Except… well…'
'I could sic a Green Balloon on him.'
