Aircraft. The sound passed over but did not fade into the distance. Another and another. Damn it.
Naismith took out some gear and began monitoring the remotes that Jeremy had scattered the night of the ambush. He was still three thousand meters from the crater, but some of the pellets might be in enough sun to be charged up and transmitting.
He searched methodically through the entire packet space his probes could transmit on. The ones nearest the crater were gone or so deeply embedded in the forest floor that all he could see was the sky above them. There had been a fire, maybe even a small explosion, when this bobble burst. But no ordinary fire could have burned within the bobble for fifty years. If a nuclear explosion had been trapped inside, there would have been something much more spectacular than a fire when it burst. (And Naismith knew this one: There had been no nuke in it.) That was the unique thing about this bobble burst; it might explain the whole mystery.
He had fragmentary views of uniforms. Peacer troops. They had left their aircraft and were spreading around the crater. Naismith piped the audio to his hearing aid. He was so close. But it would be crazy to go any nearer now. Maybe if they didn't leave too many troops, he could sneak in tomorrow morning. He had arrived too late to scoop them and too early to avoid them. Naismith swore softly to himself and unwrapped the lightweight camping bag Kaladze had given him. All the time he watched the tiny screen he had propped against a nearby tree trunk. The controlling program shifted the scene between the five best views he had discovered in his initial survey. It would also alert him if anyone started moving in his direction.
Naismith settled back and tried to relax. He could hear lots of activity, but it must be right down in the crater, since he could see none of it.
The sun slowly drifted west. Another time, Naismith would have admired the beautiful day: temperatures in the high twenties, birds singing. The strange forests around Vandenberg might be unique: Dry climate vegetation suddenly plunged into something resembling the rainy tropics. God only knew what the climax forms would be like.
Today, all he could think of was getting at that crater just a few thousand meters to the north.
Even so, he was almost dozing when a distant rifle shot brought him to full alertness. He diddled the display a moment and had some good luck: He saw a man in gray and silver, running almost directly away from the camera. Naismith strained close to the screen, his jaw sagging. More shots. He zoomed on the figure. Gray and silver. He hadn't seen an outfit like that since before the War. For a moment his mind offered no interpretation, just cranked on as a stunned observer. Three troopers rushed past the camera. They must have been shooting over the fellow's head, but he wasn't stopping and now the trio fired again. The man in gray spun and dropped. For a moment, the three soldiers seemed as stricken as their target. Then they ran forward, shouting recriminations at each other.
The screen was alive with uniforms. There was a sudden silence at the arrival of a tweedy civilian. The man in charge. From his high-pitched expostulations, Naismith guessed he was unhappy with events. A stretcher was brought up and the still form was carted off. Naismith changed the phase of his camera and followed the victim down the path that led northward from the crater.
Minutes later the shriek of turbines splashed off the hills, and a needle-nosed form rose into the sky north of Naismith. The craft vectored into horizontal flight and sprinted southward, passing low over Naismith's hiding place.
The birds and insects were deathly silent the next several minutes, almost as silent and awestruck as Paul's own imagination. He knew now. The bursting bobbles were not caused by quantum decay. The bursting bobbles were not the work of some anti-Peacer underground. He fought down hysterical laughter. He had invented the damn things, provided his bosses with fifty years of empire, but he and they had never realized that-though his invention worked superbly- his theory was a crock of sewage from beginning to end.
He knew that now. The Peacers would know it in a matter of hours, if they had not already guessed. They would fly in a whole division with their science teams. He would likely die with his secret if he didn't slip out now and head eastward for his mountain home.
..But when Naismith finally moved, it was not back to his horse. He went north. Carefully, quietly, he moved toward the crater: For there was a corollary to his discovery, and it was more important than his life, perhaps even more important than his hatred of the Peace Authority.
EIGHTEEN
Naismith stopped often, both to rest and to consult the screen that he had strapped to his forearm. The scattered cameras showed fewer than thirty troopers. If he had guessed their locations correctly, he might be able to crawl in quite close. He made a two-hundred-meter detour just to avoid one of them; the fellow was well concealed and was quietly listening and watching. Naismith suffered the rocks and brambles with equal silence. He carefully inspected the ground just ahead of him for branches and other noise-makers. Every move must be a considered one. This was something he had very little practice at, but he had to do it right the first time.
He was very close to his goal now: Naismith looked up from the display and peered into a small ravine. This was the place! Her suddenly still form was huddled deep within the brush. If he hadn't known from the scanners exactly where to look, he would not have noticed the flecks of silver beyond the leaves and branches. During the last half hour he had watched her move slowly south, trying to edge away from the troopers at the crater rim. Another fifteen minutes, and she would blunder into the soldier Naismith had noticed.
He slid down the cleft, through clouds of midges that swirled in the musty dampness. He was sure she could see him now. But he was obviously no soldier, and he was crawl-ing along just as cautiously as she. Paul lost sight of her the last three or four meters of his approach. He didn't look for her, instead eased into the depths of shadow that drowned her hiding place.
Suddenly a hand slammed over his mouth and he found himself spun onto his back and forced to the ground. He looked up into a pair of startlingly blue eyes.
The young woman waited to see if Naismith would strug-gle, then released his shoulder and placed her finger to her lips. Naismith nodded, and after a second she removed her hand from his mouth. She lowered her head to his ear and whispered, "Who are you? Do you know how to get away from them?"
Naismith realized with wry bleakness that she had not seen through his disguise: She thought she'd landed some dazed crone. Perhaps that was best. He had no idea what she imagined was going on, but it could hardly be any ap-proximation to reality. There was no truthful answer she would understand, much less believe. Naismith licked his lips in apparent nervousness and whispered back, "They're after. me, too. If they catch us they'll kill us, just like your friend." Oops. "We've got to turn from the way you're going. I saw one of 'em hiding just ahead."
The young woman frowned, her suspicion clear. Naismith's omniscience was showing. "So you know a way out?"
He nodded. "My horse and wagon are southeast of all this ruckus. I know ways we can sneak past these folks. I have a little farm up in -"
His words were lost in a steadily increasing roar that passed almost overhead. They looked up and had a quick impression of something large and winged, fire glowing from ports at wings and tail. Another troop carrier. He could hear others following. This was the beginning of the real in-vasion. The only place they could land would be on the main road north of the crater. But given another half hour, there would be wall-to-wall troopers here and not even a mouse could escape.