The Wanderer (18 page)

Why, there would be earthquakes—possibly—and gigantic ocean tides—certainly, though he wasn't sure how quickly they'd build up—and there might be…well, he didn't think the Wanderer could crack the Earth at this distance, but just the same he wished he could look at Terra right now, with his binoculars, and reassure himself.

It was his duty to warn Earth, or at least to try, no matter how hopeless the attempt seemed. He warmed the radio of the Baba Yaga and began alternately to send and listen.

Once he thought he heard the beginning of a reply, but it faded.

He wondered if anything down on that green-spotted black hemisphere could be listening in.

Arab Jones and his weed-brothers on Manhattan Island were almost twice as far into the day as the saucer students were still in the night, since the dawn-line at this moment was sweeping west across the Rocky Mountains at its customary 700 miles an hour, also bringing rosy daybreak and the buzzards to Asa Holcomb's mesa.

Somewhere near Roosevelt Square Arab pointed up at the roofs and cried: "There they are!"

High and Pepe looked. The low roofs were lined with people, explaining in part the mystery of deserted 125th Street. Some of the people were looking down at them, and a few were beckoning urgently and calling.

But it was impossible to make out the words because of the loud chugging of an abandoned taxi, skew-parked so close by that High clutched one of its open doors to steady himself.

"They crazy they think they escape the bombs that way," Pepe said, peering upward.

"Bombs come from space, don't burrow up through the lock from old Pellucidar."

"You sure of that?" High demanded. "Maybe that fireball tunneling from the river!"

"They all awaiting the glorious fireball!" Arab cried loudly, spreading his arms to comprehend the roofs. "They all dead already. Like Manator! They a rooftop wax museum! All New York!"

Abruptly the fear-kick in that last vision became absolutely real fear, and the thought of being spied upon and chittered at and lured and finally, irresistibly summoned by all those dark, wax-skinned living mummies fifty feet overhead became quite intolerable.

"Let's get out of here!" High yelled. He crouched down and squat-stepped into the front of the taxi.
"I
getting out!"

Arab and Pepe piled into the back. The forward lurch of the taxi slammed the door shut and sent them back against the cold, slick leather cushions as High headed west, gathering speed as he wove around abandoned cars.

The stampede of sections of the New York City Police and Fire Departments, marring the metropolis' relatively swift and sensible preparations for catastrophe, was due to a number of factors: exaggerated reports of the tidal bulge at Hell Gate and the quake damage to the Medical Center on upper Broadway, scrambled directives sent out by a water-shorted computer in the underground center of the new interdepartmental coordinating system, and false reports of riots around the Polo Grounds.

Yet just plain nerves played their part—naked fear operating alongside the frantic urge to rush out and somehow play the hero. It was as if the Wanderer were finally bringing true the old lunatic superstitions' about the moon pouring down rays of madness. All over the Western Hemisphere—in Buenos Aires and Boston, in Valparaiso and Vancouver, there were the same wild, purposeless sorties.

High Bundy was stepping on the gas three blocks west of Lenox when he and Pepe and Arab heard the sirens coming. At first they couldn't tell where they were coming from, only that they were coming, because they were getting louder fast Then the cab crossed Eighth Avenue, and as the raucous wailing crescendoed they saw charging toward them up Eighth, not a block away, two squad cars abreast and what looked like more behind them, their red business-lights flashing.

High stepped harder. The sound of the sirens should have cut down for a couple of seconds while there were buildings between the cab and the police cars. But it didn't. It got louder.

There was an old jalopy abandoned smack in the middle of the next intersection.

High aimed to pass it to the right A Black Maria and a fire chief's car hurtled out of Seventh Avenue from the south and swerved around the jalopy to either side. High stepped to the floor and held his course, just missing their tails, and got across Seventh feet ahead of a big, end-swinging firetruck following the other two cars by hardly a length. Pepe glimpsed the great red hood and the wide-eyed face of the driver and clapped his hands to his eyes, it was so close.

The cab wasn't halfway down the next block when the intersection ahead filled with more red and black cars, racing north on Lenox. The sound of the sirens from behind and ahead was brain-shaking.

If the weed-brothers hadn't been loaded on pot, they might have realized that this stampede of police cars and firetrucks from lower Manhattan had nothing to do with them personally and that the ferocious vehicles weren't converging into 125th Street, but continuing their mad dash north.

But the weed-brothers were loaded, and the master fear-kick of pursuit by police was upon them. Pepe believed they were to be scapegoats for an attempt to destroy Manhattan by suitcase bombs—they'd be frisked for fireballs and convicted on the evidence of a Zippo lighter.

Arab knew it was the purpose of the police to frogmarch them to the nearest roof and tie them down among the grinning wax mummies.

High simply thought they'd been spotted smoking weed back at the river—probably by telepathy. He braked the cab to a stop just short of Lenox. They piled out The subway entrance yawned with the dark invitation of a cave or den, promising the security all terrified animals crave. There was a white sawhorse half blocking it, but they darted past and clattered down the stairs.

The token booth was empty. They scrambled over the turnstiles. There was a lighted train waiting, its doors open. But there wasn't anybody in it.

The station was lit, but they couldn't see any people anywhere, on this platform or the one across.

The empty train was purring softly and insistently, but after the sirens faded there wasn't another sound.

Despite Doc's snoring for morale purposes, no one except Rama Joan tried to follow his example, and after a half hour or so Doc himself lifted his head, propping it up on his doubled arm, so as to get into an argument Hunter and Paul were having about the paths in space Earth and the Wanderer would take with respect to each other.

"I've figured it all out in my head—roughly, of course," Doc told them. "Granting they're of equal mass, they'll revolve around a point midway between them in a month lasting about nineteen days."

"Shorter than that, surely," Paul objected. "Why, we can see with our own eyes how fast the Wanderer's moving." He pointed to where the strange planet, maroon and light orange now, was dipping atilt toward the ocean, the blunt yellow spearhead of the moon striking across its front almost from below.

Doc chuckled.
"That
movement's just the Earth turning—same thing as makes the sun rise." Then, as Paul grimaced in exasperation at his own stupidity, Doc added:

"Natural enough mistake—I keep making it in my own mind, which I inherited from my cavemen ancestors along with my tail bones! Say, look how far the sea's gone out! Ross, I'm afraid the tidal effects are showing up faster than we hoped."

Paul, trying to get back into the swing of the discussion, made himself visualize how tides eighty times higher would mean tides eighty times lower too—at six-hour intervals, at most places.

"Incidentally," Doc added, "we'll be about ten days getting into that nineteen-day orbit, since Earth's acceleration is only about five-hundredths of an inch a second. That of the moon, also in respect to the Wanderer, must have been about four feet a second, cumulative, of course."

A chilly land-breeze came sneaking around Paul's neck. He pulled his coat tighter—he'd got it back from Margo when the Little Man had given her one of the leather jackets. In spite of that she had Miaow inside the jacket to make her warmer as she stared out across the long, flat beach.

"Look how the light glistens on the wet gravel," she said to Paul. "Like amethysts and topazes shoveled out of trucks."

"Ssh," said the fat woman, beside her.
"He's
getting messages."

Just the other side of Wanda, the Ramrod was gazing at the Wanderer as though hypnotized by it, his chin on his fist, rather in the attitude of "The Thinker."

"The Emperor says, 'No harm to Terra'," the Ramrod droned just then in a trancelike voice. " 'Her turbulent waters shall be stilled, her oceans withdrawn from her shores'."

"A planetful of King Canutes," Doc murmured softly.

"Your emperor ought to have got on the ball in time to stop the earthquakes," Mrs.

Hixon called tartly. Mr. Hixon laid his hand on her arm and whispered to her. She flirted her shoulders, but made no more cracks.

Rama Joan opened her eyes. "How are your speculations going now, Rudolf?" she challenged Doc. "Angels? Or devils?"

He replied: "I'll wait until one flies in close enough for me to see whether his wings are feathery or leathery." Then, realizing that he'd not necessarily made a joke, he looked quickly toward the Wanderer with a sardonic shudder. Then he stood up and stretched himself and surveyed the platform.

"Ha, I see you loaded the truck while I snoozed," he commented blandly. "That was considerate. Didn't even forget the water jugs—I suppose I have you to thank for that, Doddsy." Then, softly, to Hunter: "How's Ray Hanks?"

"Hardly woke up when we moved the cot into the truck and guyed it to the sides.

Put a blanket around him."

There was a droning in the sky. Everyone held very still. Several looked apprehensively toward the Wanderer, as if they thought something might be coming from there. Then Harry McHeath called excitedly: "It's a 'copter from Vandenberg—I think…"

But it looked like a regulation enough little dragonfly of an observation 'copter as it slanted down toward the sea, then swung around and came along the beach, traveling at not much more than fifty feet. Suddenly it swerved toward them and hovered overhead.

The drone became a roar. The down-blast from the vanes scattered the pile of unused programs in a white flutter.

"Is the damn fool trying to land on us?" Doc demanded, crouching and squinting upward like all the others.

A great voice came down through the drone.
"Get out! Get out of here!"

"Why, the bastards!" Doc roared, so that what the voice said next was lost. "They're not satisfied with slamming the door in our faces. Now they order us out of the neighborhood!" Beside him the little Man lifted and fiercely shook his fist.

"Get off the beach!"
the great voice finished as the 'copter tilted over and continued in its course down the coast

"Hey, Doc!" Wojtowicz yelled, grabbing the bigger man's shoulder. "Maybe they're trying to warn us about the tides!"

"But that won't be for at least six hours—"

Doc broke off, as it became apparent that the roar wasn't leaving with the 'copter, and as water spurted upward in a dozen places through the cracks between the floorboards.

All around the platform was a pale welter of foam. The wave had come in while all their eyes were on the 'copter and its roar had masked that of the wave.

"But—" Doc demanded, rather like King Canute himself.

"Not tides, but tsunami!" Hunter yelled at him. "Earthquake waves!"

Doc smote his own forehead.

With a hissing of sand and a hollow clanking of gravel the water receded, leaving behind a ghostly patchwork of spume.

"There's another coming!" Paul cried out, watching a distant pale wall with horror.

"Start the truck!"

The Hixons were already piling into the front seat The motor coughed and died. The starter whined by itself. Hunter, Doddsy, Doc, and Harry McHeath jumped down and prepared to heave at the truck's sides. Rama Joan half-carried Ann across the platform, pushed her into the truck, and slapped her across the face when she tried to come back.

"Stay there and hold on," she snarled. Wanda tried to follow Ann, but Wojtowicz grabbed her in a bear-hug, telling her: "Not this time, Fatty!" Paul lifted and tried to secure the truck's tailgate.

The motor caught. Wojtowicz swung Wanda behind him, and he and Paul pushed at the tailgate, sprawling on the boards when the truck lurched forward a foot or so. Its rear tires squealed as they spun in the wet sand. A heave from the men below, another forward lurch, a hesitation, another running heave, and suddenly the truck was going away fast, its tailgate swinging, its tail lights shining on the foam-frosted water nipping at its heels.

The second wave was high enough to overrun a corner of the platform and rock it a little, the cracks spouting like a sprinkler system. As it receded, Paul hustled Margo across the slippery boards. She was clutching Miaow. He paused on the back edge of the platform and looked around at the others and at the men struggling to their feet below in the shallow water.

"Come on! Quick, before the third one hits!" he yelled and plunged off with Margo, leading the rush after the truck.

Arab and Pepe and High expected blue floods of police to pour down after them into the Lenox and 125th Street subway station. So they hid in the can, Arab ready to shred their remaining reefers into the toilet and High set to flush it, while Pepe listened at the door. It wasn't very smart but it was done almost instinctively.

But nobody else tried to come in; they didn't hear police tramping and shouting around, in fact they didn't hear anything. Presently they came out.

The empty station was like a haunted house, so for a while they just snuck around.

Pepe tried to get some chocolate out of a machine but it stuck. He biffed it once but stopped at the noise. They got on the back end of the empty, waiting train, which was headed downtown, and walked through it all the way to the front. There Arab fingered a lever for a while and then swung it. The doors started to close and he swung it back quick. He moved another lever and the purring got louder, and the train seemed to strain, and he quickly reversed that one, too.