A Home for the Old Ones

4

Just to make sure, I woke Shelly and Carlo and sent them up in the ultralight to check out the whole reservation, but I didn't wait for their report. I was already calling headquarters even before they were airborne. Bernard wasn't in his office, of course—it was the middle of the night, and the headquarters people kept city hours—but I got him out of bed at home. He didn't sound like he believed me. "Why the hell would anyone kidnap a couple of Old Ones?" he wanted to know.

"Ask the bastard yourself," I snarled at him. "Only find him first. That's three of the Old Ones that he's kidnapped—Beauty and her two-year-old, Gadget. And Pony. Pony is the kid's father, probably."

He made a sound of irritation. "All right. First thing, I'll need descriptions—no, sorry," he said, catching himself; how would you describe three Old Ones? And why would you need to? "Forget that part. I'll take it from here. I guarantee he won't get off the planet. I'll have cops at the Loop in ten minutes, and a general alarm everywhere. I'll—"

But I cut him off there. "No, Bernard. Not so much you will. More like we will. I'll meet you at the Loop and, I don't care how rich the son of a bitch is, when we catch him, I'm going to punch him out. And then he's going to see what the inside of a jail looks like."

But, of course, that wasn't the way the hand played out.

I took our two-man hover, which is almost as fast as the ultralight. The way I was goosing it along, maybe a little faster. By the time I got within sight of the Lofstrom Loop, with Nairobi's glowing bubble a few kilometers to the north, I was already aware of police planes crisscrossing across the sky—once or twice dropping down to get a good look at me before they were satisfied and zoomed away.

At night the Loop is picked out with lights, so that it looks like a kind of roller coaster ride, kilometers long. I could hear the whine of its rotating magnetic cables long before I got to the terminal. There weren't many pods either coming or going—maybe because it was nighttime—so, I figured, there wouldn't be so many passengers that Wan and his captives might not be noticed. (As though anybody wouldn't notice three Old Ones.)

Actually there were hardly any passengers in the terminal. Bernard was there already, with half a dozen Nairobi city cops, but they didn't have much to do. Neither did I, except to fret and swear to myself for letting him get away.

Then the cop manning the communicator listened to something, snarled something back and came toward us, looking shamefaced. "He won't be coming here," he told Bernard. "He didn't use the Loop coming down—used his own lander, and it looks like he used it to get off, too, because it's gone."

And so he had.

By the time Bernard, fuming, got in touch with any of the authorities in orbit, Wan had had plenty of time to dock with his spaceship and be on his way, wherever it was he was going, at FTL speeds. And I never saw him, or any of the three missing Old Ones, again.