"Thank you."
"That's all right. - And I made them look like a loving couple, too. Anyone coming in will be bound to say, 'Excuse me,' and leave quickly - and that will give us more time."
"How long will it be before they're conscious again?"
"I don't know. It depends on how accurately I placed the radiation and what each state of mind was and who knows what else. But when they do come back, it will take them some time to remember what happened. I'm hoping that in their position, the first thing they'll remember is that they're in love. That would preoccupy them for a while. Then when they do get around to remembering you and what it was that was being done with Moscow, it will be too late."
"Are they going to be permanently damaged?"
Paleron cast a quick look at Morrison's concerned face. "You're worried about them, aren't you? Why? What are they to you?"
"Well… shipmates."
Paleron made an inelegant sound. "I guess they'll recover okay. They might be better off if some of that supersensitive edge is ground off. They can get together and make a nice family then."
"And what's going to happen to you? You'd better get on the plane with me."
"Don't be a jackass. The Swedes wouldn't take me. They've got orders to take one guy and they'll test you to make sure you're the right one. They'll have records of your fingerprints and your retina pattern, right out of the files of the Population Board. If they take the wrong person or an additional person, that'll be a new incident and the Swedes are too smart for that."
"But then what will happen to you?"
"Well, for starters, I'll say you got hold of the stunner and rayed them both, then held the stunner on me and made me take you to the airport because you didn't know its location. You ordered me to stop outside the gates, then stunned me down and tossed the stunner into the car. Early tomorrow, I'll make my way back to Malenkigrad, like I was coming out of a stunning."
"But Konev and Kaliinin will deny your story."
"They weren't looking at me when they were stunned and almost no one remembers the actual moment of stunning, anyway. Besides, the Soviet Government knows that they ordered you returned and if you are returned, then anything Konev will tell them about you will do him no good. The government will accept the fait accompli. It's rubles to kopeks or, better, dollars to kopeks that they'll prefer to forget the whole thing - and I'll just go back to waitressing."
"There's bound to be some suspicion clinging to you."
"Then we'll see," she said. "Nichevo! What will be, will be." She smiled faintly.
They continued to travel along the highway and Morrison finally said with a touch of diffidence, "Shouldn't we to speed it up a little?"
"Not even by a kilometer per hour," said Paleron firmly. "We're going at just under the speed limit and the Soviets have every centimeter of the highway radarized. They have no sense of humor about the speed limit and I don't intend to spend hours trying to get out of a police station because I wanted to save fifteen minutes reaching the plane."
It was past noon now and Morrison was beginning to feel the mild, premonitory pinches of hunger. He said, "What was it that Konev told Moscow about me, do you suppose?"
Paleron shook her head. "Don't know. Whatever it was, he got a response on his personal wavelength. It signaled about twenty minutes ago. You didn't hear?"
"No."
"You wouldn't last long in my business. - Naturally, they got no answer, so whoever Konev was talking to in Moscow will try to find out why. Someone will find them and then they'll figure you're on the way to the airport and someone will chase out after us to see if you can be headed off. Like Pharaoh's chariots."
"We don't have Moses to part the Red Sea for us," muttered Morrison.
"If we get to the airport, we'll have the Swedes. They won't give you up to anybody."
"What can they do against the Soviet military?"
"It won't be the Soviet military. It will be some functionary, working for an extremist splinter group, who will try to bluff the Swedes. But we have official papers giving you up to them and they won't be bluffed. We just have to get there first."
"And you don't think we should go faster?"
Paleron shook her head firmly.
Half an hour later, Paleron pointed and said, "There we are and we have the breaks. The Swedish plane is in early and has landed."
She stopped the car, pressed a button, and the door flew open on his side. "You go on alone. I don't want to be seen, but listen -" She leaned toward him. "My name is Ashby. When you get to Washington, tell them that if they think it's time for me to get out - I'm ready. Got it?"
"I've got it."
Morrison got out of the car, blinking in the sunlight. In the distance, a man in uniform - not a Soviet uniform, as nearly as he could tell - waved him forward.
Morrison broke into a run. There were no speed limits on running and though he could see no one in pursuit he would not have been surprised to see someone rise out of the ground to stop him.
He turned, waved a last time in the direction of the car, thought he saw an answering wave, and continued to run.
The man who had gestured to him advanced, first at a walk, then at a run, and caught him as he all but fell forward. Morrison could see now that he was wearing a European Federation uniform.
"May I please have your name?" said the man in English. His accent, to Morrison's infinite relief, was Swedish.
"Albert Jonas Morrison," he said and together they walked toward the plane and the small group waiting to check his identity.
Morrison sat at the plane window, tense and exhausted, staring downward at the land fleeing east. A lunch, consisting largely of herring and boiled potatoes, had soothed the inner man but scarcely the inner mind.
Had the miniaturized trip through the bloodstream and brain yesterday (only yesterday?) twisted him forever into a mental attitude of apprehension of imminent disaster? Would he never again be able to accept the Universe as friendly? Would he never walk through it in serene consciousness that no one and no thing wished him harm?
Or had there merely been insufficient time for him to recover?
Of course, common sense told him that there was reason not to feel completely safe yet. That was still Soviet earth under the plane.
Was there still time for Konev's ally in Moscow, whoever he might be, to send out planes after the Swedes? Was he powerful enough to do so? Would Pharaoh's chariots take to the air and continue the pursuit?
For a moment, his heart failed him when he actually saw a plane in the distance - then another.
He turned to the stewardess, who sat across the aisle from him. He did not have to ask the question. She apparently read his anxious expression accurately.
"Federation planes," she said, "as escort. We've left Soviet territory. The planes are Swedish-crewed."
Then, when they passed over the English Channel, American planes joined the escort. Morrison was safe from the chariots, at any rate.
His mind did not let him rest, however. Missiles? Would someone actually commit an act of war? He tried to calm himself. Surely no man in the Soviet Union, not even the Soviet Executive himself, could make such a move without consultation and no consultation would take less than hours or perhaps days.
It couldn't be.
Still, it wasn't until the plane had landed on the outskirts of Washington that Morrison could allow himself to feel that it was over and that he was safely in his own country.
It was Saturday morning and Morrison was recovering. He had attended to his creature needs. He had had breakfast and had washed. He was even partly dressed.
Now he lay in bed on his back, arms behind his head. It was cloudy outside and he had only half-clarified the window because he wanted a sense of privacy. In the hours after he had disembarked from the plane and had been rushed to his present place of concealment, there had been enough official crowding around him to make him wonder a bit if he was any better off in the United States than he had been in the Soviet Union.