Lutz was totally taken in by Amalfi’s strategy, so that New York took his city away from him at the very last minute, without firing a shot or losing a man; even supposing all this—and it was an impossible budget of suppositions— Piggy and the two women prisoners would not survive it. In New York only Chris could know with what contempt Lutz treated the useless people aboard his own town; and only Chris could guess what short shrift he would give three putative refugees from a great city that did tolerate passengers.
Piggy’s pitiful expedition was probably heaving slag right now. If Lutz allowed them to live, more or less, through the next week, he would certainly have them executed the instant he saw his realm toppling, no matter how fast Amalfi moved upon Scranton when the H-hour arrived—it takes no more than five seconds to order that hostages be sacrificed. That was the whole and only reason why the many wars of medieval Earth had gone on so many years after all the participants had forgotten why they had been started or, if they remembered, no longer cared: there was still ransom money to be made.
His guardian was already impatient of that kind of example, however. As for Amalfi and the City Fathers, they had made their position too clear to be worth appealing to now. Were Chris to go back to them, they would give him more than another No; such an approach would give them all the reasons they could possibly need to put Chris under a 24-hour watch.
Yet this time he
If they knew what he was up to, they remained inactive, and kept their own counsel. He trudged out of the city the next night. Nobody tried to stop him. Nobody even seemed to see him go.
That was exactly what he had hoped for; but it made him feel miserably in the wrong, and on his own.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Hidey Hole
ORDINARILY CHRIS would not have ventured into a strange wilderness at night; even under present circumstances, he would have left perhaps an hour before sunrise, leaving himself only enough darkness to put distance between himself and any possible pursuit. But on Argus III, he had several advantages going for him.
One of these was a homing compass, a commonplace Okie object the needle of which always pointed toward the strongest nearby spindizzy field. On most planets, cities tended to keep a fractional field going to prevent the local air from mixing with that of the city itself—and when the city was on a war footing, the generators would be kept running as a matter of course in case a quick getaway should be needed. The gadget would point him away from New York for half his trip, and an ordinary magnetic compass would serve to show which way; thereafter, the homing compass would be pointing steadily toward Scranton.
The second advantage was light. Argus had no moon—but it had the hundred eyes of the nearby blue-white giant suns of the cluster, and beyond them the diffuse light of the rest of the cluster, throughout this half of the year. The aggregate sky glow was almost twice as bright as Earthly moonlight—more than good enough to read by, and to cast sharp shadows, though not quite enough to trigger the color sensitivity of the human eye.
Most important of all, Chris knew pine woods and mountains. He had grown up among them.
He traveled light, carrying with him only a small pack containing two tins of field rations, a canteen and a change of clothing. The “fresh” clothes were those he had been wearing when he had first been transferred to New York; it had taken considerable courage to ask the City Fathers if they were still in storage, despite his knowledge that the machines never told what they knew unless asked. The request left behind a clue, but that really didn’t matter; once Sgt. Anderson realized Chris was missing, he could be in little doubt about where he had gone.
By dawn he was almost over the crest of the range. By noon he had found himself a cave on the other side from which a small, ice-cold stream issued. He went very cautiously into this, as deep as he could go on his hands and knees, looking for old bones, droppings, bedding or any other sign that some local animal lived there. He found none, as he had expected; few animals care to make a home directly beside running water—it is too damp at night, and it attracts too many potential enemies. Then he ate for the first time and went to sleep.
He awoke at dusk, refilled his canteen from the stream, and began the long scramble down the other side of the range. The route he took was necessarily more than a little devious, but thanks to the two compasses he was never in any doubt about his bearings, for more than a few minutes at a time. Long before midnight, he caught his first glimpse of Scranton, glowing dully in the valley like a scatter of dewdrops in a spider’s web. By dawn, he had buried his pack along with the New York clothes—by now more than a little dirty and torn—and was shambling cheerfully across the cleared perimeter of Scranton, toward the same street by which he had boarded the town willy-nilly so long ago. There were many differences this time, not the least of which was his possession of the necessary device for getting through the edge of the spindizzy field.
He was spotted at once, of course, and two guards came trotting out to meet him, red-eyed and yawning; obviously, it was near the end of their trick.
“Whatcha doin’ out here?”
“Went to pick mushrooms,” Chris said, with what he hoped was an idiotic grin. “Didn’t find any. Funny kind of woods they got here.”
One of the sleepy guards looked him over, but apparently saw nothing but the issue clothing and Chris’s obvious youth. He cussed Chris out more or less routinely and said:
“Where ya work?”
“Soaking pits.”
The two guards exchanged glances. The soaking pits were deep, electrically heated holes in which steel ingots were cooled, gently and slowly. Occasionally they had to be cleaned, but it wasn’t economical to turn the heat off. The men who did the job were lowered into the pits in asbestos suits for four minutes at a time, which was the period it took for their insulating wooden shoes to burst into flame; then they were hauled out, given new shoes, and lowered into the pit again—and this went on for a full working day. Nobody but the mentally deficient could safely be assigned to such an inferno.
“Awright, feeb, get back on the job. And don’t come out here no more, get me? You’re lucky we didn’t shoot you.”
Chris ducked his head, grinned, and ran. A minute later, he was twisting and dodging through the shabby streets. Despite his confidence, he was a little surprised at how well he remembered them.
The hidey hole among the crates was still there, too, exactly as he and Frad had last left it, even to the stub of candle. Chris ate his other tin of field rations, and sat down in the darkness to wait.
He did not have to wait long, though the time
“Hi, Frad,” he said. “I’m glad to see you. Or I will be, once you get that light out of my eyes.”
The spoor of the flashlight beam swung toward the ceiling. “Is that you, Chris?” Frad’s voice said. “Yep, I see it is. But you must have grown a foot.”
“I guess I have. I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”
The big man sat down with a grunt. “Never thought you’d make it at all—it was just a hunch, once I heard who it was we were up against. I hope you’re not trying to switch sides, like those other three idiots.”
“Are they still alive?” Chris said with sudden fear.
“Yep. As of an hour ago. But I wouldn’t put any money on them lasting. Frank is getting wilder by the day—I used to think I understood him, but not any more. Is that what you’re here for—to try and sneak those kids out? You can’t do it.”
“No,” Chris said. “Or anyhow, not exactly. And I’m not trying to switch sides, either. But we were wondering why you let your city manager get you into this mess. Our City Fathers say he’s gone off his rocker, and if the machines can see it, you ought to be able to. In fact, you just said you did.”
“I’ve heard about those machines of yours,” Frad said slowly. “Do they really run the city, the way the stories say?”
“They run most of it. They don’t boss it, though; the Mayor does that.”
“Amalfi. Hmm. To tell you the truth, Chris, everybody knows that Frank’s lost control. But there’s nothing we
