I took the controls and got us moving again.
'Anyway,' Sam said, 'you're just in time. We're tracking a blip on our tail.'
'No flying cubes, no wild stuff?'
'Looks like your average road buggy.'
I picked up the hand mike and switched the radio to the skyband. 'What's wrong, Moore?' I said. 'Had a fall from grace? Tough luck. That Goddess is one harsh mistress. Never came through with doodly squat for you, did she?'
After a moment of silence, the radio sputtered once, then: 'No, she's not been especially benevolent.'
'What's the game now, Moore?'
'Game? No game. I'm going home.'
'Oh? And just how do you propose to accomplish that?'
'Follow you, ' Moore said simply.
I threw the mike down. 'Not if I can help it,' I said. 'Sam, got any ideas?'
Sam shook his head. 'We can't outrun him on auxiliary power, and this isn't exactly the sort of terrain you can lose somebody in.'
'So all he has to do is tag along and get a free ride home. That sticks in my craw. I want him to rot here. Or better yet, to shoot a portal that'll send him to some horror of a planet six billion years from last Wednesday, with no way home.'
'We can turn and fight.'
I thought about it before I said, 'No. We'll have to deal with him on the other side. Wherever that is. Computer? Oh, hell, what's the warm boot command?'
'Ticonderoga.'
'Hello,' came the flat, colorless voice of the A.I. 'I am an artificially intelligent, high-performance multiaccess operating system, and I am at your service for a variety of data processing functions-'
'Shut up. Sam, find out exactly how we get to the portal, will you?'
'Will do.'
Sam set up the run, the A.I. did its table lookup function, and some lines on the map lit up in yellow.
'This is going to be tricky,' Sam said. 'The aperture is right in the middle of this big mess here.' He pointed to the tangle of intersecting roads on the screen. 'We'll have to walk on tippy-toes every step. Cylinders every which way in there. In fact, I don't understand how we're going to do it. I didn't think you could put cylinders this close together without having them all mush into one another.'
'I hope they behave themselves until we get through.' Sam grunted.
'I'm not worried about that. What bothers me is shooting any portal, let alone this monster, on an auxiliary engine. It's good to have extra power if you need it.'
'No luck tracking down the software problem?'
'I was on to something when that business with the dust devil started. And that's what I should get back to.' Sam flipped down the terminal. 'We might be able to lose our friend Mr. Moore if I can coax this rig into squeezing hydrogen again.'
'That remark about your being the best qualified still goes.'
'Thing is,' Sam said ruefully, 'to err is human, and the more time I log in this new body, the more human I get. Just a few days ago I think I could have solved this thing in a minute. But now… hell, I never even liked computers.'
'Do your best.'
Darla had come up and was standing behind my seat, her hands on my shoulders. 'Jake, are you sure you're okay?'
'Yes, darling.'
'We saw flashes up ahead-and then there you were. What happened? Where's Carl's buggy?'
Just as she spoke I saw something about a quarter klick off the road. I pointed. It was the burned-out hulk of the Chevy, its shape still recognizable. Thin black smoke rose from it. There was no sign of the Tasmanian Devil.
'There,' I said. 'It's come to the end of this cycle of the loop. Now it all begins again, somewhere in time.'
'But what happened?'
Sam said, 'I've stopped asking him that. He goes off into Neverneverland, then comes back and asks if it's lunchtime yet, like nothing's happened.'
'You'll read all about it in my memoirs,' I said.
'I'll stick to whodunits. Those I can figure out. Bingo!'
'What is it?' I said.
Before Sam could answer, all the gauges went green and the main engine kicked in with a whine and a surge of power. 'Hooray,' I said. 'Now let's see if we can lose our deadhead passenger.'
'I can take a hint!' Arthur yelled from the aft-cabin.
'Not you, Arthur dear,' Darla said as she went aft to strap herself back into her seat.
'Thanks, sweetie.'
I floored the power pedal. The main engine was operating, but somehow it didn't feel quite right. A brief image came to me: inside the engine, atoms whacking into each other with astonishing violence-but they were hitting off center, not head-on.
Nevertheless, it was too much for Mr. Moore. He began to drop back.
I laughed. 'He's on auxiliary power. His Goddess won't even fix his wagon for him.'
On the rearview screen, Moore's battered armored vehicle dwindled to a gray dot.
'He can still track us,' Sam said. 'He may be able to tell what portal we shoot.'
'Not if we get far enough ahead of him,' I said, reaching to switch the auxiliary engine back on. I watched the velocity readout edge up.
'There we go,' I said. 'Even if he's at full power, we'll lose him completely.'
We watched Moore's vehicle become vanishingly small. 'Good,' I said. 'Good.'
Sam bent over the computer terminal. 'Getting back to the map-Jake, it looks like the minimum speed requirement for this portal should be a little higher than average. Just guessing from the number of cylinders and their placement, the conflicting stresses should be horrendous. Shooting this thing is going to be like trying to walk an elephant over a rope bridge.'
'What do you figure?'
Sam's long fingers darted over the keyboard. 'I'm estimating over fifty meters per second. Say fifty-five to be safe. That's 198 kilometers per hour.'
'High,' I said, 'but we can make it. As long as there're no hairpin turns.'
'Well, that's exactly what I'm looking at here.'
'Oh.'
'No problem for a Roadbug, probably, but for us-tricky, to say the least. Going to call for some fancy driving. Computer assistance, maybe.'
'Piffle.'
'Piffle, is it? Hey, Arthur! Why the hell is this portal so screwed up?'
'How should I know?'
'I don't know who else to ask.'
'Well, neither do I. I do know that washouts don't usually shoot this portal all by themselves. They go back with a Roadbug escort.'
Sam was astounded. 'What do you mean, `usually'? You mean to say there've been other washouts?'
'No, you're the first. You were also the first group of candidates. What I meant to say was that it was my understanding that a Roadbug escort through the portal would become standard procedure.'
I said complainingly, 'Why the hell didn't you ever tell us that we were the first? And if you say we never asked, I'll dismantle you with a rusty powerdriver.'
'You're not giving me much choice, are you? Okay, I never told you because I'm a rotten s.o.b. Satisfied?'
