Rings of Ice

Chapter 1: Rain

Noon—but the depth of swirling cloud blanked out any suggestion of the sun and made the air chill. She stood forlornly on the approach to the Interstate highway, knowing the chances were fifty-fifty that any car that stopped for her would mean trouble for a lone young woman. But trouble or no, she had to get a ride; time was running out.

She saw the small bus as the first fat drops of rain slanted down. The vehicle was moving slowly around the loop of the approach, feeling its way. There was no reason to assume it was slowing for her.

She forced her eyes off it, watching the rain smash into the dry dirt embankment beyond the road. The huge drops actually excavated little craters. Meteorologically, she knew, this was known as rain-drop blast, and it could be a substantial if little-known source of erosion. The construction company should either have paved the embankment or seeded it with grass. Perhaps that had been scheduled for next week. As it stood, a few good storms would carry down so much earth that the job would soon have to be done over.

In fact, one good storm would wash it out. This one. Not that it mattered. The world as she knew it was coming to an end.

The downpour developed so rapidly that by the time the bus pulled abreast of her she was drenched. But the vehicle stopped, it stopped!

It was not a bus after all, or a van, but a motorized trailer, a camper, a motor home. There was a massive “W” on its side, with a painted line trailing all the way to the rear. Winnebago—she had seen them on the road before, but never been inside one. Its door was set back a few feet, in the side, and it had bus-like windows. Privately owned—and surely by a wealthy family. Well, any port in a storm—especially this storm!

The door opened. She climbed in. Her wet skirt caught at her thighs, making the ascent awkward, and she was dripping water all over the fine shag carpeting inside.

A handsome, hearty man stopped looking at her legs long enough to give her a hand up. She stiffened, but reminded herself that she was the one begging the favor of a ride. It ill behooved her to antagonize anyone at the outset.

“Hi!” the big man said. “I’m Gus Gunter.” He gestured to his companion, the driver. “This is Thatch. Thatcher Zane. You?”

“Zena Emers,” she said, looking about. The interior was elegant—an amazing contrast to the stark metal exterior. There was a dinette opposite the entrance, with a map of North America set into the plastic table surface. The upholstery was in dark leatherette, looking expensive and new. The carpeting extended all the way down the central hall to the back.

It was not the sudden luxury that dismayed her so much as the human situation. With every vestige of her clothing plastered against her body, she was suddenly thrust into a traveling bachelor apartment Maybe she would be better off in the rain.

“Get it moving, Thatch,” Gus said. Had he read her mind?

The driver shook his head dubiously. He was a medium-small man with heavy-lensed glasses that distorted his pale brown eyes, and he had a moderately receding chin. His face was scarred as if by smallpox or childhood acne. His hairline was drawing back from his forehead, though he could not be over thirty. As men went, wholly unimpressive.

“I don’t know,” Thatch muttered. “She’s all wet, and the visibility—” His voice was somewhat nasal, in contrast to the chesty timbre of his handsome friend.

“You worrying about the visibility outside—or inside?” Gus demanded. It might have been a joke, but he wasn’t smiling, and Zena herself was all too well aware of her involuntary exposure. But how did one buy a raincoat or umbrella while hitchhiking broke? “I’ll take care of Miss Emers,” Gus continued. “It is Miss?”

She nodded reluctantly. She might have insisted on Ms, but would not lie about Mrs—and doubted that it would have made any difference to this pair.

“So you get this crate going before it stalls out,” Gus finished.

The driver should have bridled at the tone, but Thatch only shrugged and eased the motor into gear. The beat of rain on the windshield intensified as the vehicle picked up speed.

Gus put his big familiar hand on Zena’s elbow. “There’s clothing in back. Maybe some’ll fit you. Don’t worry about the rug; it’ll dry.”

“Thank you, no,” she said, shaking him off. Already it was beginning! “Where’s the next stop?”

“No next stop,” he said. “You’re staying with us. Now come on back.” And once more that hand landed, this time on her wet shoulder.

She rammed a stiffened knuckle into his armpit and followed it up with a wrist grip that sent him twisting to the floor. “Thatch!” he cried as he went down, crashing against the dinette table so that it clattered to the floor. He sounded like a lost child.

Thatch brought the bus to a skidding halt that made Zena grab for the little sink. There was an entire kitchenette along this wall, including a range and a refrigerator, but she did not have the opportunity to appreciate it. She wanted to get out—but now she was several feet down from the only door, with Gus sprawled across the narrow hall between her and it.

Thatch whirled his padded basket seat around and threw off his seat belt. He stood on the elevation between the front chairs—a rise in the floor that perhaps made room for the motor below—and in his hand was a small pistol. “Do not move,” he said.

From bad to worse! She was normally a keen judge of suspicious characters, but Thatch had fooled her.

Zena moved. Her foot jerked up and her shoe flew off, striking his knee. Her aim would have been better if it had not been for the restriction of her soaking clothing.

As his eyes followed that direction, she hurdled Gus and dived for the gun hand. It was not as great a distance as it seemed, for the motor home was compactly organized.

“Thatch!” Gus repeated. “I’m hurt!”

She got the gun hand and clubbed Thatch’s wrist with the stiffened side of her own hand. Not hard enough; she lacked the training to be really effective. He did not let go. Instead his other arm came around to grab her. They wrestled clumsily, jammed between the two front seats, their feet skidding on the carpeted platform. But she got her shoulder into his chest and bent the gun hand back until his grip loosened.

Still Thatch clung to her with desperate strength, hugging her in a manner that would have been ludicrous if intended to be romantic and suicidal if combative—except for the gun. Obviously he knew nothing about fighting, and he was trying to restrain her rather than hurt her. At another time she might have appreciated the consideration, if that were what it was. Maybe they just didn’t like damaged merchandise.

She wrestled the gun from his weakened grasp and swung it at his head. But his clumsy hold entangled her, and the blow only grazed his ear. The butt of the gun bent the earpiece of his glasses, and the lenses fell sidewise across his face, suspended from his other ear. The blow hurt, she was sure, but he did not collapse the way Gus had.

She hit him again, more squarely, but the gun lacked heft, and still he would not yield, though his glasses continued to dangle perilously against his chin. His hand wrenched at the back of her blouse, pulling it out of the band of the skirt, and they both tripped over Gus’s legs and toppled. She did not have proper hold of the gun, and it fell out of her hand as she struggled to disengage herself from the two men.

“Thatch!” Gus cried again, though he was now only peripherally involved.

She caught Thatch’s hand a second time and applied a finger grip, a submission hold. He was obviously the one she had to subdue; Gus was not even trying to help his friend.

“Now I want off this bus!” she gasped.

Thatch was adamant “No.”

“I can break your finger.”

Still the fool would not give way. “You don’t understand.”

She put pressure on his hand and saw him whiten behind the tenuously hanging glasses. “Yes. Off!”

He shook his head, and finally the glasses fell. “No!”

She realized suddenly, and by no obscure intuition, that she could break his finger—and still it would not change his mind. He was impervious to compulsion. Yet obviously it was not sex that drove him; even in confused combat she could tell the difference between self defense and lascivious attack. He would have been more effective had he been less scrupulous about where he touched her. But he was one of those odd types who would not submit to pain. A masochist, possibly. He would keep coming after her, coming after her, as long as he was able.

“Gus only meant to help,” Thatch gasped. “We can’t let you go until you know the story—for your own good.”

She was twisting his finger off, yet instead of screaming the agony she knew he felt he was trying to reason with her! “I know enough of the story,” she said. “Two men pick up one girl—”

“To save you from the flood!” Gus cried, sitting up. She couldn’t hold them both off much longer, if Gus became active. In a moment she would have to make another break for it. First, the gun—

Her actions under stress often preceded her thoughts. She let go of Thatch and snatched up the weapon. Both men regained their feet and stood looking at her. They were disheveled and wet in patches from the struggle, but seemed more concerned than afraid.

“Maybe we’d better let her off,” Thatch said. He had recovered his glasses, the lenses miraculously unbroken.

“No ‘let’ about it!” Zena snapped. “When you try to gang up on a girl, and use a gun—”

“Look at the gun,” Thatch said with a wry expression.

She looked, alert for a trick. She was no expert in handguns, though she was sure she could shoot straight if she had to. Most women were womanishly foolish about such things; not her. But this, she saw now, was not actually a pistol. It was an imitation, a mockup for a child. A realistic toy.

“I just wanted to keep you quiet long enough to talk to you,” Thatch said.

Her glance flicked to the side. She could open the door and leap out before they could stop her, though she might have to clip someone again in the process. But what would she do out there in the pelting rain? Few cars were moving now, and fewer would be inclined to stop; and in just a few hours it would be too late anyway. Was escape really her best choice?

Obviously she had misjudged these men, to a degree. A toy gun! “I’m listening.”

“It’s going to rain a long time, Gus says. Maybe flooding, bad flooding. We have to stick to the highlands, the ridge, until we can get north out of the state and into the mountains. We’re picking up people along the way.”

“So I noticed.” She set down the mock gun. “Why haven’t you picked up men?”

Gus and Thatch exchanged glances. “It gets complicated,” Thatch said. “Anyway, we meant you no harm, and if you really don’t want to stay here, you can get off now. Gus just thought naturally you’d stay, and want to get dry.”

She glanced across the dinette cubicle and out of the window. The rain was still coming down heavily, at the rate of about an inch an hour. She knew it would continue, and that there would indeed be severe flooding. The men, whatever their motive, had stumbled on the right idea—and their vehicle was ideal for it. If she had misjudged them—and it seemed increasingly likely that she had, at least to some extent—she could do worse than travel with them. Much worse. For now.

“I do want to get dry,” she said. “But I don’t want to be pawed.”

Gus started to protest, but Thatch cut him off. “There’s clothing and a bath in back. You can find them yourself. We’ll be up front, driving.”

Was she making a mistake? This seemed to represent her best present hope for survival, even if it remained a minority chance. She nodded.

They squeezed aside, and Zena went back. She was still on guard against a fast move, but it didn’t come. And why should it? If they wanted something special from her, they could always try for it later. So long as she stayed aboard.

She wasn’t sure, now, that they did want anything special. They were a cozy twosome, with odd interdependencies.

The men took their seats in the driving section, and in a moment the vehicle started moving.

Zena found the clothing. The entire rear of the motor home was made into a beautiful couch that could convert into a full-size double bed large enough for three. Fair-sized windows were discreetly curtained for privacy. She wished she could lie down right then and sleep, forgetting all cares! Closets were on either side of the hall adjacent to this sitting-room/bedroom. One contained male attire, the other female.

Yet there was no other female aboard.

There were dresses, designed for a woman several inches taller and about forty pounds heavier than her. And they were a few decades out of style.

On the other hand, the male closet contained jeans and shirts to fit a high school boy. Obviously this motor home did not belong to the present occupants. Had they stolen it?

Zena closed the folding door across the hall and wedged into the boy’s apparel. Tight, very tight across the hips, but it did feel better to be dry.

She moved up to the tiny bathroom cubicle next to the male closet, carrying her wadded clothing. There was a sink, toilet and shower economically fitted in. She wrung her clothing out in the first, used the second, and passed up the last: she had no need of another drenching.

She found a towel and worked her hair over quickly. It converted magically from a dark brown straggle to a light brown dust mop. “Just call me Afro,” she murmured, smiling into the little mirror. Not an attractive arrangement, for her; her features were too sharp, so that she fancied she looked like a witch. Her green eyes contributed to the effect. But it would do just fine until she learned more about her hosts.

She emerged, but stepped back to pause before the rear side window. The water beat against it stridently, blurring everything beyond. There was only a vague sense of motion, aside from the swaying of the vehicle itself. She might as well be looking into a murky aquarium, seeing the slow turbulence of some great fish. Was it safe to be driving now? Of course not—but it would be disaster not to drive!

She would have to watch it, with the men, whatever their motive. Twenty-five and single—she would not stay young forever. Of course, men were not all alike; they only seemed that way. Maybe she had overreacted to Gus’s helping hand. Some people liked casual physical contact. But at least they knew, now, that she was not that type. She felt a twinge of guilt. She could have been married three times over by now, had she been that type. She could not point to any traumatic betrayals to explain her attitude. She could not claim that it was merely a matter of failing to meet the right man; by any rational definition the men she had known had been right. Perhaps she merely preferred her independence, needing no one. But that answer didn’t satisfy her any more than the other answers.

Life, in certain respects, was doubtless easier for women who could give and receive freely, however unwisely.

She took a short breath and blew it out. Threatening her with a toy pistol! Worse, she had fallen for it.

Still, it inevitably came back to this: who else was going her way? She couldn’t tell anyone the significance of the rain, and she didn’t have a car of her own. She was out of money; strangers wouldn’t cash checks, and she had exhausted her small change on coffee that morning. Hitchhiking had been bad enough before the rain started—but she had feared the government would be watching the mass-transportation facilities. In a few days the government’s attitude would be irrelevant, but if she were caught and detained today or tomorrow, it would be the end.

Thatch was still driving, with Gus peering ahead. The wide view provided by the windshield only made the weather seem worse. The rain pelted down in splendid savagery, making the deepening puddles dance. The fields beside the highway appeared already to be flooding, but the road itself was clear. Fortunately the interstate systems had good drainage. Visibility was so bad that Thatch was simply following the dotted line dividing two of the lanes, detouring around the increasingly frequent hulks of stalled cars.

Stalled cars. They seemed empty. What had happened to the people in them? Did they just disappear into the ground like ants from a disturbed nest? They would never return…

There were no houses in sight. The rain made it seem as if they had driven into some primeval wilderness. Indeed, there was already some debris on it, the highway—flotsam from the scrub. The wild state was wasting no time encroaching. Fortunately the bus was tight and warm; seemingly not a drop of water had leaked inside. She could not, actually, have asked for a better ride.

“I’m sorry, boys,” she said, taking her seat in the dinette just behind the driver’s seat. “I was tired and hungry and wet and jumpy. I guess I got the wrong idea.”

Gus turned, smiling. His seat was double-width, but mounted so that it could face around behind. He had an attractive grin and looked capable. But she could not forget that forlorn cry of his—“Thatch!”—as he was hurt. Not badly hurt, either! Was he in fact a physical coward, or was there something else between these two men?

“That’s all right,” Gus said. “Girl’s got to watch out for herself. Where’re you from?”

She took a moment to restore the dinette table, still fallen. It propped on a single light metal rod, now bent but not broken. Like Thatch’s glasses.

Where was she from? What was the safest answer? She felt she owed no further allegiance to the government, but she was not yet ready to set aside her commitment to secrecy.

A half-truth would have to do. “The Cape. I worked there—for a while. How about you?”

“Other side of the street,” Gus said, gesturing expansively. “State, I mean.” He seemed to carry no grudge. “Too hot for regular work, not much money, so Thatch got us this bus to drive north. The owner pays for gas and tolls, and we have a week to get it safely to Michigan.”

Zena shook her head silently. It was nice to know they had come by the vehicle honestly—but it would never see Michigan, now that the rain had started.

“Just in time, too,” Gus continued. “I figured the rain was coming, and I knew we had to get moving fast. We just stopped off for cheap gas—can’t get that on the main route—and then we saw you.”

Fine. Keep the men talking about themselves. “You had trouble finding decent work? Maybe you should have gone back to school to learn a trade.”

“I’ve been to school,” Gus said amiably. “You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’ve got a BA in Liberal Arts.”

Zena smiled carefully. Liberal arts, by one definition, was the way a dull student could get through college without having to learn anything. “You’re right. I wouldn’t know it.”

“Say—are you a karate instructor or something?”

Fair question, after the fighting she had just done. “No. If I had been an instructor, Thatch would never have gotten a hand on me. I’m a meteorologist. I happened to take a course in self-defense. Just in case.”

“Meteorology!” he exclaimed. She thought he was going to make the old joke about studying meteors, but he passed that up. “Then you know about this rain!”

Trouble again! “What do you mean?”

“That’s what you do, isn’t it? Study the weather? So you know.”

“I study the weather, yes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I know more than you do about this particular rain. Obviously I didn’t know enough to come in out of it!”

Gus let out a hearty laugh. Then he shook his head wisely. “Uh-uh! This is a special rain! It started with that band in the sky—you saw that, didn’t you?”

“No.” Literally true. But the man was on an uncomfortably accurate track—by what coincidence, she hoped to learn.

“This one that looked like a contrail, then got larger and larger until it filled the whole sky? They said it was just a freak cloud formation that would go away in a few days, but the experts always lie about things like that How could you miss it?”

“I wasn’t there.”

“Zena, the whole world could see it! The news was censored out of the papers, which is how I knew it was significant, but I have a little shortwave radio and I picked up the hams discussing it. That band went all around the earth from pole to pole, like a Russian satellite. But the Russians didn’t know anything about it either. Not the ones who were talking, anyway. You would have had to be blind or in jail to miss it!”

No help for it: She was not a facile evader, and she refused to lie directly. “I wasn’t on the world.”

Gus chuckled. “Oh, yeah! You came from the Cape. You were up in orbit, right?”

“That’s right.”

“So you didn’t see it after all. Not from below, anyhow! Maybe you were investigating it from a satellite?”

“No. Let’s talk about something else.”

“I get it now. Military secret.”

“Something like that.” Did it really make any difference? The damage had been done before Gus ever spotted his band in the sky, and there was no way to reverse it now.

“Well, the way I see it, this is no ordinary rain,” Gus said. “It’s a canopy-rain, coming down from the Saturn-rings.”

“Saturn is another planet!” Zena exclaimed, relieved to discover that he was after all off the track. It had seemed for a moment that he had somehow guessed the truth. The truth that she was still theoretically not permitted to divulge.

“I said Saturn-rings. Rings of ice, like those around Saturn—only they’re around Earth now. So the rain won’t stop—not for a long, long time. Maybe the whole world will flood. Right?”

Now she was intrigued. He was veering closer to the track again. “What are you talking about?”

“You know. You’re the meteorologist. I only know what I read.”

“That’s right. I’m the meteorologist—and I can’t make much sense of what you’re saying. What’s this about a canopy, or rings of ice?”

“That theory. How there were rings of ice around the world, long ago. And they melted down into a canopy, and then into rain—so much that the oceans rose up maybe a mile, and never did go down again. That’s what the Bible is really talking about, and all those other legends of the flood. And it’s starting again!”

“I never heard of such a thing!” Zena said indignantly. “There’s no fossil record of such large increases in the ocean level—not in the past billion years, certainly!”

“Oh yes there is,” he insisted. “Just in the last million years the ocean has changed—”

“Fluctuated, yes; risen, no,” she said. “You’re thinking of the last ice age, when so much water was taken up by glaciers and polar ice that the level of the world’s oceans dropped—then rose again when all that ice melted. But that has nothing to do with any canopy—”

“Yes it does! And ancient man actually saw the canopy.”

“Ridiculous! What ancient man saw were the four great glacials of the Pleistocene: Gunz, Mindel, Riss and Wurm.”

“The four frost giants,” Gus agreed. “But it was the canopy that caused those glaciers. Say—didn’t they have American names, too?”

“There were equivalent glacials in North America. The Nebraskan, Kansan, Illinoisan and Wisconsin. They were named after the states in which the first finds were made—the moraines and scratches and other typical signs. The European ones were named after the various German valleys where they were identified. The two sets correlate pretty well.”

“Right! So there was one overall cause, worldwide. The canopy.”

“Gus, if man had seen anything like that, he would have recorded it somehow, if only in legends.”

“He did. Ancient pottery shows the canopy, and Stonehenge was built to—”

She laughed. “I don’t know what sort of stuff you read, but that’s crackpot theory! Are you sure it wasn’t a fantasy novel?”

“Nonfiction,” he said seriously. “It was the Annular Theory. I have a book on it packed away, Heavens and Earth of Prehistoric Man. Things like that interest me. I’ll show you, when we have a chance to unload.”

“So that’s why you think this rain will flood the world!” she said derisively. “You read someone’s wild conjecture—”

But Gus was not nettled. Whatever his failings, he had a steady temper. “Do you know otherwise?”

That shut her up. She did not know otherwise. In fact this theory of his bore an uncanny resemblance to the actual situation. It was as if fate had directed her to the very person who could understand and help—a person she would never ordinarily have met. She knew the rain would continue, horrendously, even though she was not free to admit that. Everything she had learned in space was classified, rightly or wrongly. Her flight from the stupidity and confusion that had precipitated this crisis did not release her from the oath of secrecy she had unwillingly taken.

But if Gus came close to the truth, was she bound to lie in defense of that secrecy? Or was it ethical to let him prevail, so long as she never specifically confirmed his accuracy?

“So we figure the whole state will flood out, maybe in a few days, and we’re headed for the mountains,” Gus said, satisfied. “We’ve got the Whole Earth catalogue and extra gasoline, a fifty-gallon reserve tank we won’t touch until we have to. And food.”

“Food?” she said eagerly.

“Hey yeah, you’re hungry! Here.” Gus got up and stepped past her to the kitchenette. He got a loaf of bread and opened the refrigerator. “Mostly jars of stuff—we figured it would keep better, because we won’t always have current for the fridge. And we didn’t have too much money. Bean or marmalade?”

“What?”

“Your sandwich. We have other stuff, but it isn’t open yet. Don’t want to waste anything.”

“Oh.” She got up, feeling her fatigue now that she had had a chance to rest. “I’ll do it.”

Gus shrugged and turned over the makings. She made herself one of each.

“So it’s like this,” Gus said as she munched sandwiches that hunger made delicious and washed them down with a glass of milk. “Maybe the whole nation will flood out, with only a few islands where the mountain tops are. No one will be left, except us. We don’t have an ark, so we’ll have to use this bus. And we’ll save civilization. Like Noah.”

Zena had to laugh, explosively. Fatigue and relief had abated her inhibitions. Precious crumbs of bean sandwich sprayed out of her mouth in most unladylike fashion, embarrassing her. “Noah!”

But Gus was serious. “That’s why we’re picking up people. We don’t need old ones or sick ones—but every young, healthy person is a potential citizen of the new order.”

Suddenly it wasn’t funny—if it had ever been. She had been preoccupied by the problems of the moment, and hadn’t thought it through: people were going to die. Including her own family, if she didn’t get through in time to warn them. Had she herself been picked up because she was a woman of childbearing age?

“Make sense to you?” Gus asked, averting his gaze.

It made sense, all right! These two hoped to build a captive kingdom! Would she have been accepted as a candidate if she had not been pretty? Ha-ha! “I believe I’ll get off at the next mountain,” she said.

Gus made a gesture of laissez-faire. “It has to be voluntary, of course. But you’ll drown, here.”

The awful thing was that it was true. She would drown, if she didn’t get out of Florida in the next few days. And as the nature of the disaster became apparent to the surviving populace, a woman alone would not be safe. From either the weather or the people.

“If you really believe that the world in this vicinity is coming to an end,” she said, “why aren’t you worried about your own folks? You do have folks?”

Gus wasn’t fazed. “My dad farms in the mountains. My brother was captain of his school swimming team. They can take care of themselves.”

“And yours?” she asked Thatch.

Thatch didn’t answer.

“He knows we can’t save anyone else until we save ourselves,” Gus said. “If there’s a break in the rain, then maybe we can look about.”

“A pragmatic philosophy,” she said. “It confirms my opinion of you. How about dropping me off when you hit the Appalachians, then?”

If Gus caught the irony he didn’t show it. “Sure enough. But you’re eating our food and using up our gas. You’ll have to earn your keep.”

She tensed. “Such as?”

“Such as cleaning house, washing socks, sewing buttons—”

“I’m a meteorologist! I never sewed a button in my life!”

“Well, there’s a sewing machine in back. We don’t know how to use it.”

“Neither do I!” she snapped.

Gus looked at her with annoying tolerance. “Being feminine bugs you, doesn’t it.”

Perfect shot! Her first impulse was to hit him again, to make him go down with another wail for his buddy. Her second was to launch a tirade on masculine arrogance. But she was better rested now, and dry, and not so hungry, and her more sober third impulse prevailed. She would not be baited! “All right—I’ll sew buttons!”

Gus shrugged with just one shoulder, knowing he had the upper hand now. “You don’t have to. That was only an example.”

“Yes I do have to,” she said with controlled fury. “Because I have other values, and I’m not joining your kingdom.”

The vehicle slowed. “There’s one,” Thatch said.

Another pickup. “Male or female?” Zena asked.

“Female,” Gus said, swinging around to look. “Young. And single. We don’t even stop for nonsurvival types. I told you.”

“Do you mean you leave them standing, knowing they will drown?” she demanded. But that required no answer: of course they did.

It was female, all right. A tall girl with long blonde hair, her breasts standing out like turrets in the plastered mess that was her dress. Zena was relieved to see her; a statuesque blonde was exactly what was needed to distract the men.

Gus got out of his seat and pushed open the door as the motor-home halted. The sound of the rain became loud, making Zena shiver. “Welcome aboard!” Gus cried, extending his big hand.

“Thank you, sir,” the blonde answered. Her voice was low and husky, as befitted her appearance. A sex bomb, despite what originally had been reasonably decorous apparel. She stepped up lithely, showing muscular legs above the tall heels. She was shorter than Gus, but not by much. “That rain! Will it never stop?”

“It never will!” Gus said cheerfully. “Get it moving, Thatch.”

Thus did another fly walk into the spider’s nest. Wait until Blondie heard about the onerous duties of citizenship!

“What’s your name?” Gus asked. “I’m Gus; this is Thatch, and she’s Zena.”

“Gloria,” she said, smiling properly. “Gloria Black. My car ran out of gas, and no one would stop! I’m soaked!”

“Horrors!” Zena muttered behind her hand.

“There’s dry clothing in back,” Gus said, putting his familiar hand on her damp shoulder. Zena winced. “I’ll show you.”

“Thank you,” Gloria said, ultimately feminine even when dripping. She did not seem to find it remarkable to be welcomed in to a traveling bedroom. Zena resented the type but found it expedient to remain silent.

“Do you know how to sew?” Gus inquired.

“Excellently.”

“Well, let me tell you where we’re going,” Gus said enthusiastically. “You know, there’s a sewing machine here! This rain won’t stop. We have food—”

“That’s fine, but I’m only going to Gainesville.”

“I’d better explain,” Gus said, guiding her back. “This rain—”

Zena transferred to the seat Gus had vacated, so that she could talk to Thatch privately. The chair was capacious and comfortable; one could readily fall asleep in it. But what a contrast to the fury of nature outside, so thoroughly visible here! “Hello,” she said.

Thatch’s eyes flicked over to her, then back to the road. He didn’t answer. The rain made driving dangerous, even at the moderate speed he was going, but he could talk if he wanted to. She wondered if the heat of physical struggle had made him forget his shyness before, while her direct approach in the absence of Gus choked him up.

“I’m sorry I hit you,” she said.

“Forget it.” She could see his knuckles whiten on the wheel. Gus might readily forgive; but not this man.

“If I hurt you, I’ll try to clean it up,” she said. “I am sorry, Thatch. I thought you had a real gun, and I overreacted.” How much easier it was to apologize to an unhandsome man, as though he were less dangerous!

“It’s not that,” he said tightly.

“You aren’t much for socializing, are you?” It was amazing how his obvious discomfort made her feel at ease; not long ago Gus had teased her similarly.

He smiled momentarily, still not looking at her. In that moment his weak-chinned, scarred face gained strength. “Gus takes care of that sort of thing.”

She was tempted to inquire exactly what the relation between the two men was, but refrained. Some men preferred men, particularly those brought up in fatherless households. If this were his case, it really was not her business. In fact, that would verify that she had been mistaken about Gus’s familiarity; it could be his camouflage for a basic disinterest in the opposite sex.

Well, blonde Gloria would soon be the proof of that pudding! In any event, it behooved Zena to comprehend the real motives of Gus and Thatch. She might well be eating and working with them for several days in close quarters. “Do you do all the driving?”

“Gus doesn’t have a license.”

She was surprised; she had anticipated a demurral. “Was it revoked?”

“No, he never learned to drive.” Thatch was speaking more freely, now that they were talking about another person. He was shy and basically harmless; even when goaded to action by a threat to his friend, he had used that toy pistol!

“Well, I have a license,” she said. How much better to drive, even through this weather, than to sew buttons!

“You’re not part of the party.”

If Gus had said that, it would have had another meaning. “So you go along with everything Gus says?”

Thatch nodded affirmatively.

“If you trust me to fix your food,” she said, “you should trust me to drive.”

“It’s not that, Miss Emers. Gus has firm notions of propriety. Women don’t drive.”

“Call me Zena,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t.

Sure enough, he didn’t answer. His arms tightened again, and he stared straight ahead.

“You can’t do all the driving!” she exclaimed. “In this weather it must be an awful strain.”

“The job must be done.”

There wasn’t much to say to that, so she just watched ahead. There had been other traffic at the start of the rain, for the interstate was a busy highway. Now the moving traffic had thinned. It had been raining for an hour; many cars had stalled. Thatch went around them, maneuvering with skill.

Most of the traffic must have gotten under cover as the deluge had intensified. A number of vehicles were evidently waiting it out; they were pulled to the sides, dark lumps beyond the spray.

Zena shook her head. In time the water would rise up about them, and it would be too late for the hapless occupants. She wanted to cry the alarm—but even if she were not bound by paramilitary restrictions, it would be a hopeless task. There were hundreds, probably thousands of cars waiting; she could not warn them all. And if she could the people would not believe her. Why play Cassandra, the prophetess of doom?

Gloria and Gus returned. The blonde did know how to sew, and rapidly, too: she was wearing one of the outsize dresses Zena had passed over, and now it fit her spectacularly.

“So you don’t believe the rain will stop,” Gloria commented as they sat down in the dinette. She peered forward worriedly. “I do hope you’re mistaken.”

“I’m not mistaken,” Gus said. “Zena here’s a meteorologist. She was up in orbit watching the whole thing. She’ll tell you.”

“I have said nothing about it.” Zena protested.

“You don’t have to. You know I’m right—that’s why you’re coming along, even though you don’t like men.”

“I didn’t say that, either,” Zena said. If she had had something in her hand she would have thrown it at him, hard.

Gloria’s eyes narrowed speculatively. “Could I talk to you a moment, dear, privately?” she asked Zena.

And what did she have in her bleach-headed mind, Zena wondered. This group was not shaping up to her liking! But she nodded, reining her temper. “If you wish.”

They went to the bedroom/lounge and pulled the door across. “Are you a meteorologist?” Gloria asked, her voice low so that it could not be overheard.

Zena had expected a question on a different topic, but this was just as bad.

“He’s serious,” the other woman said. “He believes the entire state is going to flood—and you aren’t denying it. I’m not one to place credence in a wild notion like that, but—”

Zena shrugged.

“I saw that band in the sky,” Gloria said. “It alarmed me. But I have a special reason to be concerned, so I hope you will tell me the truth.”

Zena would have been angry at this affront to her integrity, but realized that in this circumstance it was a fair question. “Either the rain will stop—or it won’t. I can’t help you.”

“Be patient, dear. This is difficult, and I may have to get off soon anyway. Gus wants me to—”

“To help restore civilization after the flood has wiped out the rest of humanity,” Zena finished. “He thinks we’re part of his post-deluge empire.”

Gloria looked at her, one brow arched. “I suppose that’s one way of putting it. So if the rain is that bad—and at this stage I’m almost ready to accept that!—it will be awkward.”

“I have already tried to make that plain to them. They think I’m merely being difficult.”

Gloria began to color. “More than awkward. You see, I am not quite what I appear to be. Ordinarily it doesn’t matter, but if it really floods—”

“Suddenly I don’t follow you.”

“I am not a woman. Not physically.”

Zena cocked her head. “Would you spell that out in monosyllables, please—dear?”

“I have a male body.”

Now Zena stared. “You say you are a man?”

“A transvestite, if you will, though that isn’t quite accurate. Male body in female clothing.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“The matter is subject to verification, if you insist.”

Zena realized with a growing shock that she meant it “No—I’ll take your word!”

Gloria looked relieved. “Thank you. So you see. I would not be much help in what Mr. Gunter has in mind. I wish it were otherwise.”

Zena rather suspected that it was otherwise, but she wasn’t going to gamble. “Why—”

“Why do I dress like a woman? That would be tedious to explain at the moment. Right now I have to know: is it really going to flood—the way they think?”

Zena sighed. “Yes, it really will.”

“So that there may be hundreds of feet of water?”

“There may be.”

“Then I suppose I’d better explain things to the others. I cannot remain with this group under false pretenses.”

Zena studied her/him carefully. There was no sign that this was not a woman. Could this be some elaborate defense mechanism? Still, she remembered those muscular legs as Gloria had first stepped up into the vehicle. Those would be normal, for a man. She stifled what threatened to become a hysterical laugh. “No, I think you should surprise them with it one romantic evening.”

Gloria smiled—and did the maleness show in that expression now? “I have surprised men most unpleasantly upon occasion,” she said.

Now a peep got loose. Zena covered her mouth. “I can imagine!” Actually she did not find it funny so. Much as acutely embarrassing. But what was the proper reaction to a confidence like this? Either an extremely mixed-up woman stood before her—or a man.

“For a short trip, no confession would be necessary or desirable,” Gloria said. “But in a case like this, with close proximity for many days—”

Zena finally sobered. “I understand.” God, what complications!

They went forward. “Got it all worked out, girls?” Gus demanding, smiling.

“Not exactly,” Gloria said. “About this business of picking up girls—”

“We’re picking up young, healthy people,” Gus said quickly. Zena noted his defensive reaction. What was he hiding?

Gloria shook his head. “I would like to join your party. But there is something I have to tell you.”

“It’s voluntary, of course,” Gus said quickly, becoming accommodating as he saw the plum dropping into his hand. Zena bit her tongue to suppress a nervous giggle.

“I’m afraid you don’t understand,” Gloria said, blushing again. Zena had another moment of doubt: if Gloria were not female, a terrific amount of practice must have gone into that blush! Zena herself very seldom colored.

“Oh-oh,” Gus said. “You married?”

“No, not married! But I’m not—”

“Not another wallflower!” Gus groaned. “Zena here doesn’t much like men, either.”

“Don’t blame Zena,” Gloria said. “The truth is—”

Thatch slowed the vehicle. “Flooded ahead,” he announced.

“Splash on through it,” Gus said irritably, not appreciating the distraction.

“The motor may quit.”

“Then start it again!” Gus returned to Gloria. “Now look, you can’t be squeamish about—”

“You can’t start a wet motor,” Thatch said.

“Then dry it off!” Gus yelled. He had, it seemed, an answer for everything—except what Zena knew was coming. Served him right! “Girls, I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

Meanwhile the flood was close at hand. Obedient to Gus’s directive, Thatch maintained speed and drove into it. The water sprayed high on either side and the bus slowed. Zena heard the wash of liquid against the underside, and it made her nervous. The motor would quit—and there would be no drying it, in this continual rain. Yet delay was intolerable!

Then the vehicle rose out of it and rolled over solid asphalt again. “See?” Gus said smugly.

But they were entering a lowlands section of the highway, and there was more flooding ahead. Gloria did not have opportunity to make his statement before they were splashing again.

The second area was deeper—eighteen inches at least And in the center of it, the motor stalled.