The Shield of Time

II

The sun was down and low-level megalopolis was quite dark, strung with electric jewels further than Koskinen could see—from Boston, Massachusetts, to Norfolk, Virginia, he recalled vaguely, and eastward to Pittsburgh, where it extended a tendril to meet the complex derived from Chicago. Skyscrapers and Centers reared above that hazy dusk, their heights still catching daylight. The western sky arched greenish over the sunset embers. He recognized Venus and two crawling sparks that were relay satellites. There were more aircars than he remembered from boyhood, darting on a score of traffic levels. Material prosperity was on the way back at last, he thought. A transcontinental liner slanted huge and silvery across the lanes, bound for Cape Cod seadrome. He watched it with longing.

Sawyer set the autopilot and punched for Washington. The car was assigned a medium level, which it entered when the liner was safely past. Sawyer took out a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?” he invited Koskinen.

“No, thanks.” With an idiotic need to talk, say anything as long as the humming silence in the vehicle could be held off, he explained, “We couldn’t on Mars, you see.”

“Oh, yes. When your oxygen had to be recycled—”

“No, weight and spate was what ruled out tobacco,” Koskinen said. “Oxygen was no problem. Not toward the end, at least. With what we’d learned from the Martians—together with them, I should say—we developed an air reclaimer the size of your fist, with capacity enough for two men at top metabolic rate. I’ve included one in the shield unit. Naturally, when I was traveling around on the surface of Mars, using the potential field instead of a thermsuit and helmet…”

Sawyer stiffened. “Cut that!” he barked. “I shouldn’t hear any more.”

“But you’re Security,” Koskinen said in astonishment.

“I’m not the boss man,” Sawyer said, “and I don’t want them to wipe my brain of what I’m not supposed to know. Too often you lose more memories than they figured on.”

“Shut up,” said his companion. Sawyer showed a second’s alarm, then clamped his lips. Koskinen sagged back. Would they erase memories in me? he thought sickly.

The companion turned around and stared through the rear window. “How long’s that car been behind us?” he snapped.

Sawyer looked too. Koskinen couldn’t help doing the same, though he saw nothing but a vehicle at the standard medium-speed distance, not noticeably different from those which moved parallel on either side. “I dunno,” Sawyer said dryly. “We’re not the only ones going to Washington.”

The other man took a spyscope from the glove compartment and peered through it. “Yeh,” he grunted. “Same car as followed us from Jersey. I paid attention.”

“There are a lot of blue 2012 Eisenhowers,” Sawyer said.

“I noticed the license number too,” the other man snorted. “You better go back to the Academy.”

“But—” Sweat sprang forth in tiny beads on Sawyer’s cheeks.

“Now how much of a coincidence is it that a car which happened to get right at our rear on the way to Philly then happened to leave the traffic pattern when we did, and happened to hang around in the streets for precisely as long as we were in the Hotel Yon Braun, and then by sheer chance headed off for Washington at the same moment as us?” The man spoke angrily. “And no closed circuit com in this heap to call HQ! Somebody’s head will roll.”

“We got our orders in such a hurry,” Sawyer argued. “Maybe that’s an escort there. Yeah, sure. A shadow wouldn’t be that amateurish. HQ doesn’t always tell you when you’re going to be escorted.”

“If there was time to arrange an escort, there was tune to find us an armored car with a closed talkie circuit,” the other man said. “That guy’s a foreigner. What do we do about him?”

Sawyer touched the phone. “Call the regular police,” he suggested. “Or HQ itself.”

“And let half the continent know something big’s going on? Not till the situation gets worse than this.” The man leaned over Koskinen and punched the pilot board. The telltale screen lit up with REQUEST MAXIMUM CIVILIAN SPEED FOR THIS ROUTE.

“What’s happening?” Koskinen managed to breathe.

“Don’t worry, kid,” said the agent. “When Control yanks us into the top lane, those birds’ll have to wait—about three minutes, I’d guess, at this traffic density—for the next opening. That’s thirty miles and a lot of other cars put between us.”

“But—but—”

Sawyer had regained composure. “This is the sort of thing we’re trying to protect you against,” he said, not unkindly. “How long do you think you’d live if the Chinese got their hooks on you?”

“Oh, he might live quite a while,” said the other agent, “but he wouldn’t enjoy it much. Whoops, here we go!”

Somewhere down in the night, the Control computer identified a break through which a car could safely rise. The warning bell rang and Koskinen was pressed back against his seat cushions. Riding lights were switching on at this twilit moment, so that he fell upward through a sudden blurred galaxy of red and green suns.” Then they were beneath him, part of the jewels strung over megalopolis. The overhead canopy showed him a sky still dusky blue, the first stars blinking forth, no trace of man except the satellites and one remote stratoliner.

The car leveled off. “Whew!” Sawyer rubbed the back of a hand across his forehead. “I’m glad to get out of there, I can tell you.”

“But what could they have done?” Koskinen blurted. “I mean, under Control—unless they had an illegal override circuit—”

“So do we, except for us it’s authorized,” the other agent grunted. “I can’t see a dogfight down in the crowded lanes, no. Especially since the cops’d be there in two minutes. But those boys aren’t playing for candy. There are stunts they could have tried.”

Sawyer relaxed a little. “The main drawback to this lane is that we might be stacked up above Washington, waiting for clearance to land, longer than it’d take us to get there at average speed. How about ducking down again pretty soon?”

“Uh-huh. Not that I expect—”

Koskinen, looking at the stars and wondering horribly whether he would see them again, was the first to spy the stratoship. “What’s that?” he called. The two agents jumped in their seats.

The craft struck downward, a great black bullet, unlighted, exhaust nearly invisible. Koskinen’s ears, used to thin air, heard the wail as it drew close. The car rocked.

“Military!” Sawyer exploded. He flung open a panel and pulled a switch. Override, Koskinen thought wildly; escape from the rigid course and speed set by Control—

The armored hull loomed monstrous in the canopy. The aircar leaned over and powerdived groundward. Traffic scattered on each side as Control tried to compensate. Across delirium Koskinen saw Control’s failure. Two pairs of red-and-green lights wobbled together, merged, went out, and a meteor trailed fire and smoke down into darkness.

“Hang on!” the nameless man shouted. “The cops’ll be coming!” Then the safety belt dug into Koskinen’s stomach. His head, thrown forward, almost struck the instrument board. The crash rattled his teeth.

“Grapple!” he heard Sawyer yell. “They got a satellite recovery grapple on us!” Through the canopy, Koskinen glimpsed lines drawn taut. The car tilted crazily. The fleeting lights fell away again. They were bound up.

Sawyer slammed the phone buttons. There was no response. “They’ve jammed our transmission,” he groaned. He leaned on the main drive switch till the engine roared and vibration nearly shook the car apart. “No use.” He cut power and slumped. “We can’t bust that mesh. Any chance the cops can intercept?”

“Not yonder,” his companion said through clenched jaws. “Even lugging us, it can outrun any police car even built. But if the Air Force gets the word in time to scramble a pursuit squadron, we might get rescued yet.”

Through the creakings and shakings, Koskinen began to hear a low whistle. Outside he saw blue-blackness and the sun again on the western horizon. They must be entering the stratosphere. And a leak had been opened in the abused chassis. He felt his eardrums pop as pressure diminished.

“That car shadowing us did have a closed com circuit,” said the unidentified agent slowly. “They were in constant touch with the stratoship. It dawdled at extreme altitude, beyond range of Control’s radars. Must’ve taken off in the first place from somewhere in America, or Continental Defense would’ve spotted it. That’s why they were so obvious about tailing us. They figured we’d do exactly what we did, rise high enough to be snatched from above. So they’re Chinese. Nobody else has that kind of organization or that much brains.”

Both men had guns in their hands. “Wh-what can we do?” Koskinen faltered. His heart pounded as if to crack his ribs. Breath grew scant; a cold draft struck his ankles.

“Break out the oxygen masks and fight,” Sawyer said. “We’ve still got a chance. Having us hanging in a grapple net from their belly slows ’em down. The cops must already have alerted MS. Con Defense radar’s going to lock onto them inside of ten minutes. A pursuit squadron will overhaul ’em in ten minutes more.”

“They must realize that too,” said the other man. His eyes never left the canopy, where the whale shape gleamed through the mesh, edged with night and stars.

The car jerked. A square of deeper blackness opened in the hull above—no, there were lights—“They’re taking us aboard!” Sawyer gasped.

His companion sat rigid, hardly seeming alive except for the blood that trickled from his nose. “Yeah,” he said. “I was afraid of that.”

His gun swung about. Koskinen looked down the muzzle. “I’m sorry, kid,” the agent murmured.

“What do you mean?” a stranger cried through Koskinen’s head.

“We can’t let them have you. Not if you’re as important as I gather you are.”

“No!”

“Goodbye, kid.”

It was not Koskinen’s will which responded. That would have been too slow. But he had practiced judo on Mars for fun and exercise. The animal in him took over the learned reflexes.

He had twisted around in the seat to face the agent. His left hand batted out, knocked the gun aside. It went off with a hiss, startlingly loud beside Koskinen’s ear. His right fist was already rocketing upward. It struck beneath the nose. The agent’s face seemed to disintegrate.

Koskinen snapped his skull backward. It banged against Sawyer’s chin. The man barked. Koskinen reached over his shoulder, got Sawyer by the neck, and hauled the agent’s larynx across his own collarbone. He bore down, brutally. Already oxygen-starved, Sawyer made a choking noise and went limp.

Koskinen sagged. Blackness whirled and buzzed around him. A quiver through the car stabbed awareness back into his brain. The hatch was just above the canopy now, like an open mouth. He glimpsed a man on the edge of it, thermsuited, air-helmeted, and armed with a rifle. The car would be in the ship’s hold in one more minute. Then, unencumbered, the ship would have a chance of escaping to wherever it had come from.

Sawyer and the other agent stirred. For a fractional second, Koskinen thought: My God, what am I doing? I attacked two MS men…I’m leaving them here to be captured—

But they meant to kill me. And I haven’t time to help them.

He had already somehow unbuckled his safety belt. He scrambled over the seatback. The parcel lay on the rear seat. He snatched it. His free hand fumbled with the door catch. The sound of air, whistling from the interior toward stratospheric thinness, filled his universe.

The car bumped over the hatch frame. Koskinen got the door unlocked. Swords rammed through his eardrums as he encountered the full pressure differential. The thermsuited man aimed the rifle at him.

He jumped from the open door, out through the hatch, and started falling.