He touched the Venturis disdainfully. They were still warm.
“How about the arms?”
“They’d be more difficult—” And then he had it. “Of course. They remind me of the long-range handling gear used by nuclear physics men behind shields when they deal with hot stuff. You put your hands in controls and operate the remote extension metal hands and peer through the glass — that’s it.”
“So someone could sit miles off and control these things by radio, see by tv and radar, and manipulate the arms?”
“Something like that.”
Polly shivered and turned away. “Let hope he — or it — isn’t watching us now.”
“I think my grenade fouled up the works inside when the thing went over. It looks pretty defunct to me.”
“Come on, Rolley,” she said suddenly, sharply. “Is it really necessary to spend hours gawping over your kill like a big-game hunter?”
He turned away at once. Then, gently, he said: “There’s an old saying, Polly, admirably suited to our present position. ‘Know your enemy.’ That tank could yield us a clue to whoever — or whatever — lives in the Map Country.”
Walking back with her was an ordeal. He wanted to keep rotating his head on a stiff neck and look back. He fought down the impulse. “If they are watching us then there’s not much more we can do.” He put a hand on the car door. “You realize that the way back is now open?”
“Yes. But I believe more firmly than ever before that Allan is up there someway.” She pointed ahead. “That way.”
Without another word Crane entered the car.
After a time in which the Austin purred comfortably along the white road between the river and groves of the tall, top-heavy trees, Crane said musingly: “Allan went into the Map Country from the east — as I did the first time — and we are entering from the west. The actual point of entry, we know, is where the map is torn.”
Polly sat up with a jerk, pulling on the wheel. Her rounded chin went up too, defiantly. “You mean there’s no way of telling how much country lies between the two points here?”
Crane shook his head. “No, Polly. I mean that the lines of directions we took crossed. If Allan was going one way and we the other and we both entered the Map Country at the same point, why, then—”
“We’re going away from each other!”
Crane had the decency not to say anything to that.
The car stopped precipitately. Polly switched off at once, propped her elbows on the wheel and put her head on them.
“All right, Rolley. What do we do now?”
The result of his remarks surprised Crane. Then he chuckled to himself. Polly was working up to something; she was too fire-proof to be much shaken by his revelation.
“If that theory is true, then we can never enter the same part of the Map Country as Allan. While we hold the map, that is. When we go back to enter his half, we’ll pop out through our torn map into the real world.”
“So?”
“Alternatively—” Crane snapped his fingers. “Let’s have a look at the map, Polly. It might give us another idea.”
He took the wallet out, pushing that enigmatic chain back more firmly into his pocket. The wax paper crackled as before — and then the map was in his hands. He opened it cautiously. His attention centered at once on the torn edge.
“An old all-rag paper,” he said, feeling and looking. “Made before they cut down Canada for the daily scandals. And the edge is rough, far rougher than you’d expect. Look—”
He fibrillated the fibers gently.
“That’s linen — real good solid-cellulose base, with a bit of cotton for bulk. And the edges have been savaged.”
Polly looked at him sideways. “Well, Rolley?”
He smiled. “I believe the other section of the map is as jaggedly torn as this. That means there is a fair size section of map actually missing — if you like, a long narrow stripe of nothing down the middle.” He tapped the paper. “And mat, my dear Polly, is the Map Country.”
“So Allan is on the other side of this narrow strip.” She turned the ignition key and started the car. “Good. So we can get on. All that flap was for nothing.”
Crane looked at her disgustedly. “Women!” he said.
Despite their flippancy, despite the offhand manner in which they both talked about the macabre events about them, both of them, Crane was acutely aware, were tensing up and, as it were, wincing back from the terrors ahead. For now these phantasms of the imagination were about to take on flesh and blood and come stunningly alive; they could not long be delayed. Liam refused to reenter the Map Country. Colla had never returned from it. Men had been snatched by lambent ovals of light. And Allan Gould and his girl had vanished completely.
Crane sat nervously fingering the grenade bag, wishing he had enough courage to tell Polly to turn the car around and enough force of character to do it. But, being what he was where women were involved, he did nothing and let her have her own way. Yet he knew wryly there was more to his reluctance to dominate her than that; the manhood in him refused to allow that he, too, wasn’t man enough to venture on into the unknown, and the essential Tightness of what they were attempting accorded with his own unspoken wishes — despite the blue lights and the funk simmering in his mind. And the anticipation of fear screwed down with every revolution of the wheels.
“There’s one thing in your favor.” Crane stared out on the weird landscape, stable now but marching past, as the car moved, with the drunken irregularity of unfinished scenery from a theater workshop. “If this road is the only stable artifact here then Allan is likely to be on it. Or near enough to spot us.”
“So I trust.”
“What’s he been living on?”
“Berries, fruits, game — we passed a whole herd of ruminants back there. You were looking the other way.”
“Oh? If this is a million years in the past the most recent Ice Ages won’t have started yet, so I’d expect this sort of climate — the climate we’re experiencing at this moment,” he added with unnecessary explanation, “and vast herds of animals. But—”
Very seriously, Polly said: “I don’t think we’re in the past, either. We’re in some — some other world.”
“And if we were sensible people we’d get out of it — quick.”
“Must you keep on?”
“Sorry.”
“Look — there’s something beyond those trees.”
Crane took one look, leaned across the girl and wrenched the steering wheel around. The car left the white road in a tortured shriek of tires, jounced across yielding grass and came to an outraged stop beneath the trees. Shadows fell from the branches. Crane opened his door and clutching his bag of grenades to his side leaped out and darted back the way the car had rolled, crouching, taking cover behind the boles of trees. He peered out and along the road.
“What is it, Rolley?” Her clear voice reached him, no hint of panic there.
“Quiet!” he said softly, waving her down. She walked up behind him with the selfconscious stealth of a lioness on her first kill.
Together they stared out from the trees, taking good care to remain well-hidden in the shelter of the trunks.
“The Moving Heath,” Crane whispered. “I never thought to see that come true.”
Moving from one side of the road to the other in a steady and unhurried stream marched lines of ambulant bushes. Each bush had grown perhaps five or six feet in height and as broad across, bearing many tiny leaves glittering silver and olive green as they flashed and fluttered in the light. Concealed within that fairy foliage lay clusters of glistening golden berries, delectable at first sight, bringing the sting of anticipatory saliva to the mouth. The trunks rose stocky and solid, dark gray, seamed with a cracked bark, ancient. Crane concentrated on one bush and looked hard and carefully.