Wheep! Wheep!
Lee tore off the fax sheet, read it and handed it to C.C. Miller.
BOSS IT'S GETTING STICKY. MOORKITH IS HERE WITH FULL AUTHORITY FROM THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL TO TAKE CHARGE. THE CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL TOLD HIM TWO MILKHEIM TRUCKS CROSSED THE BORDER AT NEEDLES FOUR DAYS AGO. MOORKITH IS UPSET. MOORKITH IS VERY UPSET. MOORKITH IS FURIOUS. HE'S SCREAMING AT COLONEL MURPHY. THE COLONEL IS SCREAMING AT ME.
DIRECT ORDER FROM COLONEL MURPHY: CAPTAIN ARTERIA, YOU WILL REPORT YOUR LOCATION AND CIRCUMSTANCES IMMEDIATELY. MURPHY.
COLONEL MURPHY SAYS I HAVE ONE HOUR TO FIND OUT WHERE YOU ARE AND GET A FULL REPORT AND THEN HE'S SENDING THE AP'S LOOKING FOR YOU.
HE SAYS THAT BUT I THINK HE SENT THEM OUT ALREADY.
I HOPE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING BECAUSE ITS GETTING HOTTER THAN HELL AROUND HERE.
BILLINGS
Miller read it, then handed it to Bob Needleton. They all stood in a group around Lee's car, reading in the light from the office windows behind them.
"That does look sticky," Bob Needleton said.
"It is sticky," Lee said. "Up to now I might just get away with saying you overpowered me. I'd look like an idiot letting you and Harry get my piece away from me after the way you telegraphed your moves, but I could talk my way out of a court martial. Now I have direct orders to tell my colonel where I am and what I'm doing. That's not a game anymore. That's Leavenworth."
"So what will you do?" Miller asked.'
She looked around at their faces as they stood in a circle around her car. At the desert beyond. Then at the open door to the hangar. She could just see the base of Phoenix.
She still held the submachine gun. She stood for another moment, then got into the car, laid down the machine pistol, and began to type furiously at her fax machine.
Harry looked at Miller. They both looked at Hudson. Hudson shrugged.
Arteria got out again and retrieved her weapon. "There. Take the big tank trucks to the oil fields at Taft and abandon them. Have somebody follow in a car to take the drivers, then call this number and tell the duty sergeant where you left the trucks. Get away from there fast. Keep going on north to wherever you want to hide. Meanwhile, I've got the Air Police watching Cajon Pass to San Bernardino. About the time they get that covered, they'll get the tip about the trucks in Taft. Go on, move! This ought to buy us a few hours."
Hudson nodded warily.
C.C. said, "Sarge, Mark, a truck each. Bjo, you've got a hydrogen car? Fuel up and follow them and keep moving. Sarge, you're in charge."
"Right."
Lee Arteria stood up briskly, The gun had never left her side. "Now as to my price."
"So what's your price?" There was something in Bob Needleton's voice that said he already knew. What had passed between them in the car on the way here?
"I'm going up," Lee Arteria said.
Hudson shook his head emphatically. "We don't have time to repack. It's packed for four and we're only six hours from liftoff--"
"Your seat, Pins."
Needleton said, "Captain, I never said I wasn't going."
"I heard what you told me, coming here. You're staying to teach, you're staying to fight, you're giving up and leaving, you're not sure what you'll do up there, you'll be locked in a can with the woman who kicked you out and the man who took her. You're in a quantum state, Pins. Well, I'm flipping you over."
Arteria was moving forward; Bob Needleton was backing up. He didn't seem to be aware of it. His jaw thrust out mutinously. "If I give up my seat it'll be to something that's needed up there. What are you doing?"
Arteria was opening zippers. She was wearing lots of zippers. She said, "I've done too much to cover for you. I go up, or I go to Leavenworth. I caught you people! Fair and square, and then I covered for you."
"So you have to go underground. So do most of us. You can hide as easy as me. Easier. You know more about how to do it."
"Not good enough," she said. "You can't stop me."
"I can try. Maybe I can kill you before you summon help, maybe I can't."
"I don't have to summon anyone. If I don't report in, they'll know where to look."
"I don't believe you--"
Arteria laughed softly. She was moving toward him while dropping things: the submachine gun. Her leather jacket. A holdout gun from one boot, a knife from the other, then the boots. Handcuffs, the fancy pin in her hat. Bob Needleton watched in horror, retreating, and nobody else moved.
"Maybe it's a bluff. Maybe you, couldn't alert your squad because you waited too long." Bob's threat might have been more effective if he weren't backing up toward the Operations Planning Room.
"Every cop on Earth knows my face." Handcuffs, a mace delivery system, a horrifying armory. And her pants. Blouse. "They're all going to think … know I betrayed them."
She looked quite dangerous, Alex thought. She had muscles… smoother than Steve's, but powerfully differentiated. She looked to Alex like an alien life form, and more female every second.
Arteria was almost nose to nose with Bob Needleton. He'd backed up against a flat surface. She wasn't wearing anything at all now. She said, "What about a woman of childbearing age?"
"Okay," Bob said, "you're a woman."
"Open the door," she said.
"Door?" Needleton became aware of the flat surface behind him. He found a doorknob and turned it and backed through.
Lee Arteria said, "I'll be taking your seed with me."
"I don't, uh--"
"I didn't ask."
Slam.
Gordon was smiling broadly. "Wonderful! Just like `God's Little Acre.' "
"Shouldn't we be trying to rescue him?" Sherrine looked at the stunned faces around her.
Hudson climbed out of Phoenix and gathered the others around him at the ship's base.
"All right," he said. "It's set. We launch at oh-six-forty-four on the dot. Commander Hopkins has the rendezvous set. He'll go when we report success."
"Who do you need here for the launch?" Miller asked.
"Once we get the roof opened, no one. We'll open that in half an hour, then you people scatter, and I mean scatter. Get off the base and take off in all directions. Can anybody go straight north across the desert?"
"We can," Harry said. "But maybe Jenny and I ought to stay. Stand guard."
"And do what? Not that I need to ask," Hudson said, as Jenny reached toward her boot. "Look: just now I won't be wanted for anything but stealing my own spaceship. I can land in a foreign country and the lawyers can take care of it. Kill somebody and they'll have extradition warrants out everywhere we can land! Not to mention that a bunch of Air Force johnnies who right now sympathize will be gunning for me. I have to come back to Earth to get Annie! No, thanks, Harry."
"No last stand?" Jenny said.
"No."
"Imagine my relief," Harry said. "Look, we'll be going out last, right? I'll take a coil of that stainless steel wire and close off the gates. We can drop broken glass on the road up, too."
"Well, that's all right," Hudson said. "But nobody gets hurt!"
"Except maybe us," Jenny said.
"If that's what it takes to get this ship up--"
"Yeah, Harry," Jenny said. She put the pistol back in her boot. "Where's that wire?"
"Now. One more thing," Hudson asked. "Where's Arteria?"
Everyone looked at each other. "She's still--" "She's with Needleton--"
"It would help to know her weight," Hudson said. "Harry, go ask."
"Well, all right--" Harry walked across the square from the hangar to the engineering building, and stood on the porch outside the closed door to the Operations Planning Room.
He stood there a while, then came back. "Actually, you won't be very far off if you say a hundred and fifty pounds."