Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (24 page)

Therefore escape by train was out of the question. The same applied to long-distance buses. They’d all be watched. Ten to one the entire police network was ready to take up the relentless pursuit of any car reported stolen; they would assume that the culprit might have dumped one dyno intending to steal another. It was too late in the day to acquire another car by buying it outright. But . . . hah, he could do what he’d done before. He could rent one.

It took him quite a while to find a hire-and-drive agency. The evening was drawing in, many businesses already had shut for the night, others were near their closing time. In one way that might be a help: maybe the lateness of the hour would cover his haste and get him prompt service.

“I wish to rent that bullnozed sportster for four days. Is it available at once?”

“Yar.”

“How much?”

“Thirty guilders a day. That’s one-twenty.”

“I’ll take it.”

“You want it right away?”

“Yar, I do.”

“I’ll have it made ready for you and get you the bill. Take a seat. Won’t keep you more than a few minutes.” The salesman went into a small office at the back.

The door swung slowly and had not quite closed when his voice penetrated the gap, saying, “A renter in a hurry, Siskra. He looks all right to me. But you’d better call and tell them.”

Mowry was out the front, down the street and around two corners before the unseen Siskra had time to finish dialing. He’d been out-thought. The hunt was a move ahead of him. All renting agencies had been warned to report every applicant for a car. Only a narrow door gap had saved him. If it had closed and silenced the voice he’d still have been sitting there when a carload of agents burst in.

“Why d’you want this dyno,
hi?
Where d’you plan to go with it? Where d’you live? Who are you, anyway? Hold your arms up while we have a look at your pockets.”

His back was sticky with sweat as he put plenty of distance between him and the dyno-dump. He threw away his glasses and was mighty glad to be rid of them. A bus came along bearing the sign:
Airport.
Now he remembered that he’d passed an airport on the road coming in. Wasn’t likely that Alapertane had more than one of them. Undoubtedly the port itself would be staked right, left and center, but he did not intend to ride that far. This bus would take him to the outer suburbs and in the direction he wanted to go. Without hesitation he jumped aboard.

Although his knowledge of the town was small his inward journey had given him a shrewd idea of how far he could go without reaching the fringes. A police check was likeliest immediately outside the town where the road left the built-up area and took to the country. At that point all those aboard could be regarded as leaving Alapertane and therefore fit subjects for questioning. He must get off the bus before then.

Dismounting in good time, he continued walking outward in the hope that on foot he could avoid the checking-post by sneaking past unobserved, say by taking to the fields. Day was almost done; the sun was half under the horizon and light was dimming fast.

He slowed his pace, decided that he’d stand a better chance of getting through in darkness. But he dared not draw attention to himself by mooching up and down the road or sitting on the curb until nightfall. It was essential that he should look like a local citizen homeward bound. Turning off the main road he detoured at set pace through a long series of side roads, circled back, regained the main one when the sky was black.

Continuing outward, he concentrated his attention straight ahead. After a while the road lights ended, the shine from many house windows ceased and in the distance he could see the sky-glow of the airport. It would be anytime now. He had a strong urge to walk through the darkness on tiptoe.

A bus overtook him, hummed into the heavy gloom, stopped with a brief blaze of braking lights. Cautiously Mowry advanced, got to within twenty yards of the bus. It was fully loaded with passengers and luggage. Three policemen were on board, two of them checking faces and documents while the third blocked the exit door.

On the verge and right alongside Mowry stood a cruiser, its doors wide open and its lights extinguished. It would have been almost invisible but for the glow from the nearby bus. But for the present hold-up he might have sneaked to within grabbing distance before seeing it; they’d have sat in silence, listening to the faint scuffle of his feet, and jumped him as he came abreast of them.

Calmly he got into the cruiser, sat behind its wheel, closed the doors and started the dynomotor. On the bus an irate cop was yelling at a frightened passenger while his two fellows looked on with cynical amusement. The click of door locks and the low whine of a motor went unheard during this stream of abuse. Rolling the cruiser off the verge and onto the road, Mowry switched on the powerful headlights. Twin beams pierced the night, bathed a long stretch of road in shining amber, filled the bus with their glare. He accelerated past the bus, saw the three cops and a dozen passengers staring out at him.

He bulleted ahead feeling that the fates had been kind and compensated for recent ill fortune. It was going to be some time before the alarm went out and the pursuit commenced. By the looks on the faces of those police they had not realized that it was their own car shooting past. Perhaps they thought he was a motorist who’d taken advantage of their preoccupation to slip by unquestioned.

But it was likely they’d take action to prevent a repetition. Two of them would continue to browbeat the bus passengers while the third went out to catch any more sneakers. In that event the third could hardly fail to notice the absence of the cruiser.

That’s when the fun would start. He’d give a lot to see their faces. No cruiser meant no radio either. They’d have to rush the bus to the far-off airport, or stir their lazy legs and run like mad to the nearest house with a telephone. Better still, they’d have to make a humiliating confession over the line and take a verbal beating-up from the other end.

This mental reminder that in seizing the car he had also acquired a police radio caused Mowry to switch it on. At once it came to life.

“Car Ten. Suspect claims he was examining parked cars because he’d completely forgotten where he’s left his own. He is unsteady, his speech is slurred and he smells of
zith
—but he may be putting on an act.”

“Bring him in, Car Ten,” ordered Alapertane H.Q.

Soon afterward Car Nineteen asked for help in ringing a waterfront warehouse, reason not stated. Three cars were ordered to rush there at once.

Mowry turned the two-way switch to get the other channel. It was silent a long time before it said, “K-car. Waltagan calling. A seventh has now entered house.”

A voice rasped back, “You’d better wait. The other two may turn up yet.”

That sounded as if some unfortunate household was going to suffer a late-night raid by the Kaitempi. The motive was anyone’s guess but it did not necessarily have anything to do with the finding of Sagramatholou’s dyno. The Kaitempi could and would snatch anyone for reasons known only to themselves; they could draft any citizen into the ranks of D.A.G. merely by declaring him in. The Kaitempi could do anything they pleased—except smack down a wasp, push away a Spakum space fleet or win a war.

He switched back to the police channel because over that would come the howl of fury about a missing cruiser. The radio continued to mutter about suspects, fugitives, this, that or the other car, go here, go there and so forth. Mowry ignored the gab while he gave his full attention to driving at the best speed he could make.

When twenty-five
den
from Alapertane the radio yelped as the big long-range transmitter in Pertane itself let go with a powerful bellow.

“General call. Car Four stolen from Alapertane Police. Last seen racing south on main road to Valapan. May now be passing through area P6-P7.”

Replies came promptly from all cruisers within or near the designated area. There were eleven. The Pertane transmitter started moving them around like pieces on a chessboard, using coded map references that meant nothing to the listener.

One thing seemed certain: if he kept to the main Valapan road it wouldn’t be long before a cruiser spotted him and caused every car within range to converge upon him. To take to minor roads and tracks wouldn’t help any; they’d expect a trick like that and perhaps even now were taking steps to counter it.

He could dump the car on the other side of a field, all of its lights out, and take to foot—in which case they would not find it before daylight tomorrow. But unless he could grab another car he’d be faced with a walk that would last all night and all next day, perhaps longer if he was forced to take cover frequently.

Listening to the calls still coming over the air, and irritated by the mysterious map references, it struck him that this systematic concentration of the search was based on the supposition that if a suspect flees in a given direction at a given average speed he must be within a given area at a given time. This area had a radius plenty large enough to allow for turnoffs and detours. All they needed to do was bottle all the exits and then run along every road within the trap.

Suppose they did just that and found nothing? Ten to one they’d jump to a couple of alternative conclusions: the fugitive had never entered the area because he had reversed direction and now was racing northward, or else he had made far better speed than expected, had got right through the district before the trap closed and now was southward of it. Either way they’d remove the local pressure, switch the chase nearer to Valapan or northward of Alapertane.

He whizzed past a sideroad before he saw it, braked, reversed, went forward into it. A faint glow strengthened above a rise farther along the road he’d just left. Tearing along the badly rutted sideroad while the distant glow sharpened in brilliance, he waited until the last moment before stopping and switching off his own lights.

In total darkness he sat there while a pair of blazing headlamps came over the hill. Automatically his hand opened the door and he made ready to bolt if the lamps should slow down and enter his own road.

The oncomer approached the junction, stopped.

Mowry got out, stood by his car with gun held ready and legs tensed. The next moment the other car surged forward along its own road, dimmed into the distance and was gone. There was no way of telling whether it had been a hesitant civilian or a police patrol on the rampage. If the latter, they must have looked up the gloom-wrapped sideroad and seen nothing to tempt them into it. They’d get round to that in due time. Finding nothing on the major roads they’d eventually take to the minor ones.

Breathing heavily, Mowry got back behind the wheel, switched on his lights, made good pace onward. Before long he reached a farm, paused to look it over. Its yard and outbuildings adjoined the farmhouse in which thin gleams of light showed the occupants to be still awake. Leaving the place, he pushed on.

He checked two more farms before finding one suitable for his purpose. The house stood in complete darkness and its barn was some distance from it. With dimmed lights, moving slowly and quietly, he drove through the muddy yard, along a narrow lane, stopped under the open end of the barn. Leaving the car he climbed atop the hay and lay there.

Over the next four hours the shine of distant headlights swept repeatedly all around. Twice a car rocked and plunged along the sideroad, passed the farm without stopping. Both times he sat up in the hay, took out his gun. Evidently it did not occur to the hunters that he might park within the trap. On Jaimec fugitives from the police or Kaitempi did not behave like that—given a headstart they kept running good and hard.

Gradually surrounding activity died down and ceased. Mowry got back into the cruiser, resumed his run. It was now three hours to dawn. If all went well he’d make it to the rim of the forest before daybreak.

The Pertane transmitter was still broadcasting orders made incomprehensible by use of symbols but responses from various cruisers now came through with much less strength. He couldn’t decide whether or not this fading of radio signals was an encouraging sign. It was certain that the transmitting cars were a good distance away but there was no knowing how many might be nearer and maintaining silence. Knowing full well that he was able to listen in to their calls, the enemy was crafty enough to let some cars play possum.

Whether or not some cruisers were hanging around and saying nothing, he managed to get undetected to within nine
den
of his destination before the car gave up. It was tearing through a cutting that led to the last, dangerous stretch of main road when the green telltale light amid the instruments faded and went out. At the same time the headlamps extinguished and the radio died. The car rolled a short distance under its own momentum and stopped.

Examining the switch, he could find nothing wrong with it. The emergency switch on the floorboard didn’t work either. After a good deal of fumbling in the dark he managed to detach one of the intake leads and tried shorting it to the ground terminal. This should have produced a thin thread of blue light. It didn’t.

It signified only one thing: the power broadcast from the capital had been cut off. Every car within considerable radius of Pertane had been halted, police and Kaitempi cruisers included. Only vehicles within potency range of other, faraway power transmitters could continue running—unless those also had ceased to radiate.

Leaving the car, he started to trudge the rest of the way. He reached the main road, moved along it at a fast pace while keeping his eyes skinned for armed figures waiting ahead to challenge any walker in the night.

After half an hour a string of lights bloomed far behind him and to his ears came the muffled whine of many motors. Scrambling off the road, he fell into an unseen ditch, climbed out of it, sought refuge amid a bunch of low but thick bushes. The lights came nearer, shot past.

It was a military scout-patrol, twelve in number, mounted on dynocycles independently powered by long-term batteries. In his plastic suit, with night-goggles and duralumin helmet, each rider looked more like a deep-sea diver than a soldier. Across the back of every trooper hung a riot-gun with a big panshaped magazine.