The average citizen, faced with an impressive uniform, falls into one
of two very widely divided camps. One of these camps contains those of
us who are impressed by the visible, exalted rank of the wearer.
So, by the simple process of snapping, "Official business!" at the
driver of a skycab and simultaneously tossing the driver his official
I. D. card in its ornate leather folder, Junior Spaceman Howard Reed
succeeded in commandeering a skycab.
He took off, leaving the driver in a razzle-dazzle dream of collecting
mileage from the Space Service whilst he spent the time comfortably
relaxing in a pub. Protected from public gaze by the camouflaging
skycab, the junior spaceman proceeded to cruise up the middle level of
Ancient Fifth Avenue, driving a full eighteen inches below the legal
altitude set for cruising skycabs.
He turned on his pocket set to listen to the details of the search that
was being organized for him.
Above him, all around him, even in the subways below him, the vast and
efficient organization of the Military Space Service was converging.
This organization had the will and the manpower to scour this city of
twenty million people almost literally soul by soul if the need be, to
locate a young officer in the uniform of a Junior Spaceman. He might
be driving a Military Vehicle, but more likely would be found in one
of the many public vehicles or public carriers that the city offered
for civilian transportation. There was also the high possibility that
Junior Spaceman Howard Reed might be located afoot on the static
sidewalk or on one of the tramways.
And so, mentally clocking each time-point and making a careful note
of the check-points, the junior spaceman built up a mental map of the
city and its danger points. Until the laws of simple logic failed to
operate, he was going to be exactly where they weren't.
He was, in the driver's seat of a skycab, precisely as invisible as
The Purloined Letter. But now, if he were to drive his skycab away from
the cruising level, he needed one more accessory. He had time. So long
as the Military was looking for a Military man in Military surroundings
and in a Military manner, he was as safe from detection as if he really
owned the skycab he'd commandeered.
The civilian police were closer to success.
Called by the chief of the arresting party who'd arrived at Gloria
Hanford's apartment too late by minutes, the minions of Law and Order
converged in their civilian efficiency. Logistically, it was a simple
matter of hare and hounds. The hare couldn't win. Only one question was
important: Which of the hounds would?
Afoot and by jetcopter that englobed the area, they closed in. By the
application of stored memory and studied information they erected
invisible barriers at every exposed point along the most probable trail
of their quarry, from the street outside of her apartment door to the
garage stall in Monticello. Then, as a final clincher, they installed
three men in Gloria Hanford's airscooter itself.
By virtue of the unexpected movement one can elude the cops for a time.
Gloria, on the street before her apartment building, almost went into
despair when she saw that there was no skycab within hailing distance.
She almost took it as a personal affront.
But this was hardly the time to stamp her sandals on the hard pavement
or to write letters to the Commissioner of Public Carriers.
* * * * *
She turned and disappeared into the tramway entrance heading North
along Waterfront Avenue. Her coin had hardly hit the bottom of its
slot when the mobile police converged to land on the spot she'd just
vacated. The foremost of them saw her trim figure disappearing into the
distance, eclipsed by the myriads of innocent souls whose only desire
was to make use of the same Northbound Tramway.
The pursuit began to reshape its surface of detection from englobement
to a cylinder, the axis of which lay congruent with the Northbound
Tramway.
Again, she held the advantage of knowing her own decision whereas
her pursuit had to divine her plans by analysis of her actions and
making use of extrapolation. Gloria Hanford abruptly stepped off the
Tramway at Fifty-third, walked briskly three long blocks to LaGuardia's
Sixth, found herself facing a group of burly policemen, and stopped
long enough to think. One of the cops shoved a galton whistle between
his teeth and blew a supersonic blast that registered on every cop's
detector within a quarter mile. Audibly a siren wailed. Inaudibly and
invisibly the drawstring web of civic forces began to close in.
Once more Gloria stepped into the kiosk of a tramway, the Crosstown.
She rode one more block to Ancient Fifth and stepped off. With a wave
of her hand, and then the most startling process to be found in a
woman, Gloria Hanford poked two fingers in her mouth and let go with a
shrill, piercing whistle that made every skycab driver within a half
mile come to the point of 'customer's alert!'
She made her point.
The one accessory that Junior Spaceman Howard Reed needed was a
passenger, preferably a female passenger that could be identified as
a female for a hundred yards through a high fog driven by a blinding
gale. Old, beautiful, young or ugly didn't matter, so long as it was
unmistakably woman. The Military wouldn't stop a skycab with a female
passenger.
He needed his passenger because, until he could pull the taxi-meter
flag--having filled the compartment with a customer--he was constrained
by law to cruise. Cruising would get him nowhere; what he needed was
the flag-down ticket of admission to the upper traffic levels.
The whistle shrilled at him; he looked; and then with his spaceman's
skill, Junior Spaceman Howard Reed made a mad reverse spiral landing
that nosed out a half dozen other cursing drivers. He hit ground zero
at velocity zero on target zero and flipped open the skycab door so
close that Gloria Hanford did not have to take a middle ground step to
gain entry.
He took off with a rush that tossed his passenger into the deep seat
and slammed the compartment door without human effort. Then he went
into a cruel climbing turn that wore away twenty thousand flight miles
of the engine bearings. He leveled off a thousand feet above Ancient
Fifth Avenue's top-most fast traffic level, and set his homing and
warning beacon to zero on the spaceport.
It did not bother him that his passenger hadn't taken the time to
supply him with the destination she desired. After all, Junior Spaceman
Howard Reed was not really a skycab driver. He didn't care.
Gloria Hanford rebounded from the soft cushions of the skycab
compartment and struggled her way into a position that gave her a good
look out of the broad rear window. Her driver's mad upward spiral made
her dizzy, but from the higher levels it was definitely obvious that
there was considerable concentration of movement down there below. Men
and ground cars as well as jetcopters were closing down upon the spot
they'd just left.
It did not bother Gloria Hanford that her driver hadn't waited to
inquire as to her destination. She was just happy that he hadn't. Her
destination consisted of swift flight along any vector in a solid
sphere; hers was a reverse destination properly identified by the word
"elsewhere."
* * * * *
Behind them the city erupted with a criss-crossing of radio-directed
searchbeams, catching and identifying skycar after skycar. Up from
the city's traffic levels came jetcopters and squad hoppers and some
raid-gun carriers; personnel boats; even a sprinkling of mobile
communications bases. To one side and almost behind them a flight of
star shells burst in a fire-fall of gorgeous color. To their other side
a stream of warning tracer streaked.
Howard poured on the coal.
Gloria made no protest; it was a most satisfactory agreement.
They buzzed across the Jersey Flats. He brought the skycab down on a
flat slant landing that arrowed directly in and touched ground and
skidded to a stop with all landing-gear brakes locked. They slid to
within a few yards of the spacecraft.
Only then did the junior spaceman pause to speak to his passenger:
"Sorry, but I'm in a jam. So long!"
He leaped out of the skycab, raced along the ground, went up the
ladder on a dead run, flipped into the spacelock, snapped the "Close"
switch as he passed the inner portal--and then, without waiting for
any pre-flight checkout, Junior Spaceman Howard Reed resigned from the
Space Force by slamming his controls into an emergency and unauthorized
flight program that took him up and out of Earth's atmosphere in barely
more than nothing flat.
When he was free and clear, he relaxed in his pilot's seat, swiveled it
around ... and boggled, bug-eyed, at his passenger.
Gloria Hanford, still trim and shipshape in her white sharkskin
suit, still carrying the overnight bag in her formal-for-travelling,
white-gloved hand, sat in the spare seat.
She said: "I'm sorry about this, too, but it so happens that I'm also
in a jam. Where do we go from here, Spaceman?"