"Now you're being un-bright," she told me insolently. "You should know
that you can't plan any surprise move with a telepath. And if you try a
frontal attack I'll belt you so cold they'll have to put you in the oven
for a week."
I just let her ramble for a few seconds because when she was rattling
this way she couldn't put her entire mental attention on my thoughts. So
while she was yaking it off, I had an idea that felt as though it might
work.
She shut up like a clam when she realized that her mouthing had given me
a chance to think, and I went into high gear with my perception:
#Not bad--for a kid. Growing up fast. Been playing hookey from momma,
leaving off your panties like the big girls do. I can tell by the
elastic cord marks you had 'em on not long ago.#
Seventeeners have a lot more modesty than they like to admit. She was
stunned by my cold-blooded catalog of her body just long enough for me
to make a quick lunge across her lap to the door handle on her side.
I flipped it over and gave her a shove at the same time. She went bottom
over appetite in a sprawl that would have jarred the teeth loose in a
normal body and might have cracked a few bones. But she landed on the
back of her neck, rolled and came to her feet like a cat.
I didn't wait to close the door. I just tromped on the go-pedal and the
car leaped forward with a jerk that slammed the door for me. I roared
forward and left her just as she was making another grab.
How I hoped to get out of there I did not know. All I wanted was
momentary freedom to think. I turned this way and that to follow the
road until I came to the house. I left the road, circled the house with
the turbine screaming like a banshee and the car taking the corners on
the outside wheels. I skidded into a turn like a racing driver and
ironed my wheels out flat on the takeaway, rounded another corner and
turned back into the road again going the other way.
She was standing there waiting for me as I pelted past at a good sixty,
and she reached out one girder-strong arm, latched onto the frame of the
open window on my side, and swung onto the half-inch trim along the
bottom of the car-body like a switchman hooking a freight car.
She reached for the steering wheel with her free hand.
I knew what was to happen next. She'd casually haul and I'd go off the
road into a tree or pile up in a ditch, and while the smoke was clearing
out of my mind, she'd be untangling me from the wreck and carting me
over her shoulder, without a scratch to show for her adventure.
I yanked the wheel--whip! whap!--cutting an arc. I slammed past a tree,
missing it by half an inch. I wiped her off the side of the car like a
mailbag is clipped from the fast express by the catch-hook.
I heard a cry of "Whoof!" as her body hit the trunk of the tree. But as
I regained the road and went racing on to safety, I saw in the rear view
mirror that she had bounced off the tree, sprawled a bit, caught her
balance, and was standing in the middle of the road, shaking her small
but very dangerous fist at my tail license plate.
I didn't stop driving at one-ten until I was above Dayton again. Then I
paused along the road to take stock.
Stock? What the hell did I know, really?
I'd uncovered and confirmed the fact that there was some secret
organization that had a program that included their own highway system,
concealed within the confines of the United States. I was almost certain
by this time that they had been the prime movers in the disappearance of
Catherine and Dr. Thorndyke. They--