swooping low.
He floored the accelerator, taking the next bend fast enough so that the car went up on two wheels. The vehicle’s weight was obviously ill distributed. Any good car would have taken the curve in stride. He cursed the industrial system that produced such shoddy design and manufacture. It felt good to get angry. Anger fought back the anxiety. Maybe that’s what was keeping him going.
“Stop your vehicle immediately! Pull over to the side of the road!”
The voice boomed from the craft. He pressed his foot against the metal floor.
“Pull over or you will be fired upon!”
He glanced at Alice. She looked amazingly calm. What would be her fate? They would probably shoot her up with new nanocomputers, better ones. No more evening walks, no more filching an extra dessert. Not even those peccadilloes would be allowed her then. Would it be better for her to surrender, or to die in a mad attempt to gain her freedom?
“What should I do, Alice?”
She looked at him with defiance in her eyes. As if she’d been reading his mind she said, “Don’t let them take us. I’d rather die.”
The VTOL fired, the sound like the buzzing of a chain saw. Dust rose from the shoulder. The miss had been deliberate. Gene began swerving all over the road. The craft’s guns sounded again, and this time the miss may not have been intentional. Another bend came up, trees intervening between the car and the craft. The gunship veered away.
He looked ahead for cover, for a road to turn into, a building to hide behind, anything. There was nothing but dense forest to either side of the road, which was temporarily to the good, because the gunship had to keep well above the high trees and had a bad firing angle.
“Alice, get down.”
She obeyed, tucking herself down between the dashboard and the seat.
The trees gave out and they were in wide-open country. He started weaving again. He couldn’t see the gunship but could hear its vacuum-sweeper roar. The forest picked up again about a tenth of a mile down the road, and he decided to trade defensive maneuvering for time. He mashed the pedal and drove straight, hoping to make it to cover before the craft could maneuver for a killing shot.
There wasn’t time. When he saw the craft again it was coming straight for him, its gun pods chattering. Asphalt exploded from the road, then the windshield shattered as the gunship whooshed overhead.
He spat out glass. It took him a few seconds to realize that he was miraculously unhurt. Wind from the rent in the glass tore at his face.
“Are you okay?” he yelled.
Alice nodded.
The car reached the trees and he thought that they had gotten through with no extensive damage, but telltale white smoke trailing from the hood told him otherwise. Slugs had probably hit the radiator.
He rolled another quarter mile before a red light appeared on the instrument panel. Engine overheating. A bullet must have taken out a water line. White smoke was billowing out of the hood now. Another red light came on — oil pressure dropping. He wouldn’t be able to go another mile at this rate.
The right berm graded off to a steep drop, leading down to woods. He made a decision. He braked and pulled off the road, skidding to a stop.
“Get out!” he told her.
She did, and he put the transmission in neutral, got out, and let the car roll down the slight grade, steering to the right as he walked with the car. The car crossed the berm and headed for the edge. He closed the door and let it go. It rolled down the embankment and crashed through a wall of underbrush, and when it stopped at the bottom of the gully it was wheel-deep in a creek and was very hard to see from the road.
He took Alice’s hand and led her down the embankment. She slipped on the loose shale and slid most of the way on the seat of her pants. At the bottom he hoisted her up and they splashed through the creek, ducking into woods on the other side.
They clambered up a hill. There was no trail and they had to hack through weeds and nettle. At the top they went straight until they came to the end of the woods and the edge of an overgrown hayfield.
They went to the left, keeping well inside the tree line. For the next few minutes they ran, trying to get as far from the road as possible.
When they heard the craft, they hid underneath a pine tree. The gunship whined irritably above them, searching the woods. The loudspeaker blared but the words were indistinguishable. The craft continued its pattern for a good ten minutes before going away. They listened to the engine sounds die in the distance.
Presently birds began singing again. A cricket chirped nearby.
They were lying on their bellies on a bed of brown pine needles. He rolled to his side and looked at her.
“You okay?”
She smiled. “Yes. How are you?”
“Adrenaline must do something. I feel better now.”
“Good.”
“But our situation isn’t. We’re still a long way from where we want to go, and now they’re looking for us.”
“We’ll make it,” she said.
“Yeah, even I’m beginning to believe it.”
Twenty-five
Someplace
“Isis”
A hand ran soothingly across his forehead. “Here, Jeremy.”
“Jeez. Where are we?”
“I don’t know, but we stopped.”
“Was I out?”
“Just for a minute. We hit pretty hard.”
Jeremy waited for his eyes to focus. When they did he saw a jumble of weeds and leaves pushed up against the view port. He looked around. The deck was canted sharply, but the interior of the traveler looked otherwise undamaged.
“Computer!”
“Someone get the number of that earthquake.”
“You okay, still functioning?”
“I’ll have to run a few tests, but from all appearances I am undamaged, Captain.”
“Good. Report on the condition of the ship.”
“Uh, that’s not so good.”
“How so?”
“Well, for starters,” the Toshiba said, “the main drive is inoperable.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Cracked thermocouple on the primary coil, it looks like. That’s how I interpret the diagnostic readings, but you’d really have to eyeball it to be sure. Also, the graviton polarity generator is nonfunctional. No telling what’s wrong with it.”
“Damn,” Jeremy said.
“Yeah. Also hell and botheration.”
Isis said, “We’ll simply have to fix it.”
“Oh, sure,” Jeremy scoffed. “Yeah, we’ll just get out the old Sears toolbox and make a couple trips to the auto parts warehouse.”
Isis sat down and gave Jeremy an admonitory look. “That’s negative thinking again, Jeremy.”
