* * * * *
There was still some snow on the mountain top. Down below, it would be
warm yet, but up there it was cold. The big empty house was full of
dust and chill and I brought fear in with me. I wished I had known
where I was going when I left my room; I wanted my coat. I wanted
something to read while I waited. I remembered the library book and
almost went back. Instead, I went to the dark room in back that had
once been somebody's kitchen, and opened the cupboard and found the
projector and yelled for help.
I didn't know where they were, how far away, whether cruising or
landed somewhere, or how long it would take. All I could be sure of
was that they couldn't come till after dark, full dark, and that would
be, on the mountain top, at least another four hours.
There was a big round black stove in a front room, that looked as if
it could burn wood safely. I went out and gathered up everything I
could find nearby that looked to be combustible, and started a fire,
and began to feel better. I beat the dust off a big soft chair, and
pulled it over close to the stove, and curled up in it, warm and
drowsy and knowing that help was on the way.
I fell asleep, and I was in the car with Larry again, in front of that
hotel, every cell of my body tinglingly awake, and I woke up, and
moved the chair farther back away from the fire, and watched the sun
set through the window--till I fell asleep again, and dreamed again,
and when I woke, the sun was gone, but the mountain top was brightly
lit. I had forgotten about the moon.
I tried to remember what time it rose and when it set, but all I knew
was it had shone as bright last night in the Garden of the Gods.
I walked around, and went outside, and got more wood, and when it was
hot in the room again, I fell asleep, and Larry's hands were on my
shoulders, but he wasn't kissing me.
He was shouting at me. He sounded furious, but I couldn't feel any
anger. "You God-damn little idiot!" he shouted. "What in the name of
all that's holy...? ... put you over my knee and.... For God's sake,
baby," he stopped shouting, "what did you pull a dumb trick like this
for?"
"I was scared. I didn't even plan to do it. I just did."
"Scared? My God, I should think you would be! Now listen, babe. I
don't know yet what's going on, and I don't think I'm going to like it
when I find out. I don't like it already that you told me a pack of
lies last night. Just the same, God help me, I don't think it's what
it sounds like. But I'm the only one who doesn't. Now you better give
it to me straight, because they've got half the security personnel of
this entire area out hunting for you, and nobody else is going to care
much what the truth is. My God, on top of everything else, you had to
_run away_! Now, give out, kid, and make it good. This one has got to
stick."
I didn't understand a lot of what he said. I started trying to
explain, but he wouldn't listen. He wanted something else, and I
didn't know what.
Finally, he made me understand.
He'd almost believed my story the night before. Almost, but there was
a detail somewhere that bothered him. He couldn't remember it at
first; it kept nudging around the edge of his mind, but he didn't know
what it was. He forgot about it for a while. Then, in the Garden, I
made my second big mistake. (He didn't explain all of this then; he
just accused, and I didn't understand this part completely until
later.) I wanted him to park the car.
Any girl on Earth, no matter how sheltered, how inexperienced, would
have known better than that. As he saw it, he had to decide whether I
was just so carried away by the night and the mood and the moment
that I didn't _care_--or whether my apparent innocence was a pose all
along.
When we separated in front of the hotel that night, we both had to
take the same road for a while. Larry was driving right behind me for
a good three miles, before I turned off at the motel. And that was
when he realized what the detail was that had been bothering him: my
car.
The first time he saw me, I was driving a different make and model,
with Massachusetts plates on it. He was sure of that, because he had
copied it down when he left the luncheonette, the first time we met.
Larry had never told me very clearly about the kind of work he did. I
knew it was something more or less "classified," having to do with
aircraft--jet planes or experimental rockets, or something like that.
And I knew, without his telling me, that the work--not just the _job_,
but the work he did at it--was more important to him than anything
else ever had been. More important, certainly, than he had ever
expected any woman to be.
So, naturally, when he met me that day, and knew he wanted to see me
again, but couldn't get my address or any other identifying
information out of me, he had copied down the license number of my
car, and turned it in, with my name, to the Security Officer on the
Project. A man who has spent almost every waking moment from the age
of nine planning and preparing to fit himself for a role in humanity's
first big fling into space doesn't endanger his security status by
risking involuntary contamination from an attractive girl. The little
aircraft plant on the fringes of town was actually a top-secret key
division in the Satellite project, and if you worked there, you took
precautions.
The second time I met him at the luncheonette, he had been waiting so
long, and had so nearly given up any hope of my coming, that he was no
longer watching the road or the door when I finally got there--and
when he left, he was so pleased at having gotten a dinner date with
me, that he didn't notice much of anything at all. Not except out of
the corner of one eye, and with only the slightest edge of
subconscious recognition: just enough so that some niggling detail
that was out-of-place kept bothering him thereafter; and just enough
so that he made a point of stopping in the Security Office again that
afternoon to add my new motel address to the information he'd given
them the day before.
The three-mile drive in back of my Colorado plates was just about long
enough, finally, to make the discrepancy register consciously.
Larry went home and spent a bad night. His feelings toward me, as I
could hardly understand at the time, were a great deal stronger, or at
least more clearly defined, than mine about him. But since he was
more certain just what it was he wanted, and less certain what _I_
did, every time he tried to fit my attitude in the car into the rest
of what he knew, he'd come up with a different answer, and nine
answers out of ten were angry and suspicious and agonizing.
"Now look, babe," he said, "you've got to see this. I trusted _you_;
really, all the time, I did trust you. But I didn't trust _me_. By the
time I went to work this morning, I was half-nuts. I didn't know
_what_ to think, that's all. And I finally sold myself on the idea
that if you were what you said you were, nobody would get hurt,
and--well, if you _weren't_ on the level, I better find out, quick.
You see that?"
"Yes," I said.
"Okay. So I told them about the license plates, and about--the other
stuff."
"What other stuff?" What else was there? How stupid could I be?
"I mean, the--in the car. The way you--Listen, kid," he said, his face
grim and demanding again. "It's still just as true as it was then. I
_still_ don't know. They called me this evening, and said when they
got around to the motel to question you, you'd skipped out. They also
said that Massachusetts car was stolen. And there were a couple of
other things they'd picked up that they wouldn't tell me, but they've
got half the National Guard and all the Boy Scouts out after you by
now. They wanted me to tell them anything I could think of that might
help them find this place. I couldn't think of anything while I was
talking to them. Right afterwards, I remembered plenty of
things--which roads you were familiar with, and what you'd seen before
and what you hadn't, stuff like that, so--"
"So you--?"
"So I came out myself. I wanted to find you first. Listen, babe, I
love you. Maybe I'm a sucker, and maybe I'm nuts, and maybe
I-don't-know-what. But I figured maybe I could find out more, and
easier on you, than they could. And honey, it better be good, because
I don't think I've got what it would take to turn you in, and now I've
found you--"
He let it go there, but that was plenty. He was willing to listen. He
wanted to believe in me, because he wanted me. And finding me in the
house I'd described, where I'd said it was, had him half-convinced.
But I still had to explain those Massachusetts plates. And I couldn't.
I was psychologically incapable of telling him another lie, now, when
I knew I would never see him again, that this was the last time I
could ever possibly be close to him in any way. I couldn't estrange
myself by lying.
* * * * *
And I was _also_ psychologically incapable--I found out--of telling
the truth. They'd seen to that.
It was the first time I'd ever hated them. The first time, I suppose,
that I fully realized my position with them.
I could not tell the truth, and I would not tell a lie; all I could do
was explain this, and hope he would believe me. I could explain, too,
that I was no spy, no enemy; that those who had prevented me from
telling what I wanted to tell were no menace to his government or his
people.
He believed me.
It was just that simple. He believed me, because I suppose he knew,
without knowing how he knew it, that it was truth. Humans are not
incapable of communication; they are simply unaware of it.
I told him, also, that they were coming for me, that I had called
them, and--regretfully--that he had better leave before they came.
"You said they weren't enemies or criminals. You were telling the
truth, weren't you?"
"Yes, I was. They won't _harm_ you. But they might...." I couldn't say
it. I didn't know the words when I tried to say it. _Might take you
away with them ... with us...._
"Might what?"
"Might ... oh, I don't _know_!"
Now he was suspicious again. "All right," he said. "I'll leave. You
come with me."
It was just that simple. Go back with him. Let them come and not find
me. What could they do? Their own rules would keep them from hunting
for me. They couldn't come down among the people of Earth. Go back.
Stop running.
We got into his car, and he turned around and smiled at me again, like
the other time.
I smiled back, seeing him through a shiny kind of mist which must have
been tears. I reached for him, and he reached for me at the same time.
When we let go, he tried to start the car, and it wouldn't work. Of
course. I'd forgotten till then. I started laughing and crying at the
same time in a sort of a crazy way, and took him back inside and
showed him the projector. They'd forgotten to give me any commands
about not doing that, I guess. Or they thought it wouldn't matter.
It did matter. Larry looked it over, and puzzled over it a little, and
fooled around, and asked me some questions. I didn't have much
technical knowledge, but I knew what it did, and he figured out the
way it did it. Nothing with an electro-magnetic motor was going to
work while that thing was turned on, not within a mile or so in any
direction. And there wasn't any way to turn it off. It was a homing
beam, and it was on to stay--foolproof.
That was when he looked at me, and said slowly, "You got here three
days ago, didn't you, babe?"