The silvery surface faded to dull black. A two-foot square of tattered
paper fluttered against a projecting edge of concrete; I reached for
it, peeled it free, then fumbled with a pocket flap, brought out a
permatch, flicked it alight. When the paper was burning well, I tossed
it clear. It whirled away a few feet, then caught in a clump of grass.
"Keep moving, damn you!" I whispered. The swearing worked. The gusty
wind pushed the paper on. I crawled a few feet and pressed myself into
a shallow depression behind the slab. The Bolo churned closer; a loose
treadplate was slapping the earth with a rhythmic thud. The burning
paper was fifty feet away now, a twinkle of orange light in the deep
twilight.
At twenty yards, looming up like a pagoda, the Bolo halted, sat
rumbling and swiveling its rust-streaked turret, looking for the
radiating source its IR had first picked up. The flare of the paper
caught its electronic attention. The turret swung, then back. It was
puzzled. It whooped again, then reached a decision.
Ports snapped open. A volley of anti-personnel slugs whoofed into the
target; the scrap of paper disappeared in a gout of tossed dirt.
I hugged the ground like gold lame hugs a torch singer's hip and
waited; nothing happened. The Bolo sat, rumbling softly to itself. Then
I heard another sound over the murmur of the idling engine, a distant
roaring, like a flight of low-level bombers. I raised my head half an
inch and took a look. There were lights moving beyond the field--the
paired beams of a convoy approaching from the town.
* * * * *
The Bolo stirred, moved heavily forward until it towered over me no
more than twenty feet away. I saw gun ports open high on the armored
facade--the ones that housed the heavy infinite repeaters. Slim black
muzzles slid into view, hunted for an instant, then depressed and
locked.
They were bearing on the oncoming vehicles that were spreading out now
in a loose skirmish line under a roiling layer of dust. The watchdog
was getting ready to defend its territory--and I was caught in the
middle. A blue-white floodlight lanced out from across the field,
glared against the scaled plating of the Bolo. I heard relays click
inside the monster fighting machine, and braced myself for the thunder
of her battery....
There was a dry rattle.
The guns traversed, clattering emptily. Beyond the fence the floodlight
played for a moment longer against the Bolo, then moved on across the
ramp, back, across and back, searching....
Once more the Bolo fired its empty guns. Its red IR beams swept the
scene again; then relays snicked, the impotent guns retracted, the port
covers closed.
Satisfied, the Bolo heaved itself around and moved off, trailing a
stink of ozone and ether, the broken tread thumping like a cripple on a
stair.
I waited until it disappeared in the gloom two hundred yards away, then
cautiously turned my suit control to vent off the heat. Full insulation
could boil a man in his own gravy in less than half an hour.
The floodlight had blinked off now. I got to my hands and knees and
started toward the perimeter fence. The Bolo's circuits weren't tuned
as fine as they should have been; it let me go.
* * * * *
There were men moving in the glare and dust, beyond the rusty lace-work
that had once been a chain-link fence. They carried guns and stood in
tight little groups, staring across toward the blockhouse.
I moved closer, keeping flat and avoiding the avenues of yellowish
light thrown by the headlamps of the parked vehicles--halftracks,
armored cars, a few light manned tanks.
There was nothing about the look of this crowd that impelled me to leap
up and be welcomed. They wore green uniforms, and half of them sported
beards. What the hell: had Castro landed in force?
I angled off to the right, away from the big main gate that had been
manned day and night by guards with tommyguns. It hung now by one
hinge from a scarred concrete post, under a cluster of dead polyarcs
in corroded brackets. The big sign that had read GLENN AEROSPACE
CENTER--AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY lay face down in hip-high underbrush.
More cars were coming up. There was a lot of talk and shouting; a squad
of men formed and headed my way, keeping to the outside of the fallen
fence.
I was outside the glare of the lights now. I chanced a run for it, got
over the sagged wire and across a potholed blacktop road before they
reached me. I crouched in the ditch and watched as the detail dropped
men in pairs at fifty-yard intervals.
Another five minutes and they would have intercepted me--along with
whatever else they were after.
I worked my way back across an empty lot and found a strip of lesser
underbrush lined with shaggy trees, beneath which a patch of cracked
sidewalk showed here and there.
Several things were beginning to be a little clearer now: The person
who had pushed the button to bring me out of stasis hadn't been around
to greet me, because no one pushed it. The automatics, triggered by
some malfunction, had initiated the recovery cycle.
The system's self-contained power unit had been designed to maintain a
star-ship crewman's minimal vital functions indefinitely, at reduced
body temperature and metabolic rate. There was no way to tell exactly
how long I had been in the tank. From the condition of the fence and
the roads, it had been more than a matter of weeks--or even months.
Had it been a year ... or more? I thought of Ginny and the boy, waiting
at home--thinking the old man was dead, probably. I'd neglected them
before for my work, but not like this....
Our house was six miles from the base, in the foothills on the other
side of town. It was a long walk, the way I felt--but I had to get
there.