The air was… unusual, and it got to be more so as we sped into the heart of a endless, sprawling metropolis.
Darla was rubbing her eyes. "Some kind of irritation," she said, sniffling.
"That's smog," Carl told us. "You get used to it, kinda, after living here for a while. In the fall we get the Santa Ana from the desert. Winds. They blow all the shit out to sea."
"Those poor fish," I said.
"Oh, it's not as bad as some people make it out to be."
"Carl, it smells awful," Lori said fretfully. "I don't think I'm ever going to get used to it."
"Take a good whiff of it into your lungs. You'll get to like it. Gee, I should stop and get a pack of cigarettes."
"Carl!"
It was a bright, hazy day, and the warm sun put me into a strangely good mood. The Sun. How many alien suns had warmed my skin, or irradiated it, or nearly burned it? Too many.
The sun-drenched metropolis went on and on. I couldn't believe that Los Angeles had been this big in the middle of the twentieth century, kilometer after endless kilometer of residences, businesses, office buildings, service stations, shops, institutional buildings, and apartment complexes, all laid out in a vast grid of streets and highways. These last were something. They made the Skyway look like a country lane. Clogged with murderous traffic, they met five or six at a time at snarled interchanges, twining about one another into knots of elevated ramps, cloverleafs, and cutoffs. Although speeds weren't high compared to those on the Skyway, the sheer volume of traffic made the whole mess frightening. Anyway, I was scared. Carl wasn't. He seemed to have cheered up a little, and he was navigating his way through the shifting streams of vehicles with automatic ease, like a veteran. He was home.
"There are no restraining harnesses in this buggy," I said, looking down at the blue fur-covered seats. I had known it before, but the careless disregard for safety struck me now.
"Damn good idea to have 'em," Carl said. "Congress should get after Detroit to make 'em mandatory." An afterthought: "I should have thought of putting them in when I was designing it."
I looked out at history. The architectural styles were strange to me. They just don't build things like that anymore. Everything was strange, yet somehow faintly familiar as well.
We took a spur to the right that shunted us off onto another highway. We were heading due west, toward the ocean. "This is the Santa Monica Freeway," Carl told us. "Straight shot into Santa Monica, then I'll be home." He laughed. "God, it's good to be back."
About twenty minutes later the freeway ended. We cruised down a wide city boulevard, then turned right onto a palmlined street running along the beach. There were lots of bathers out, catching the late afternoon sun.
"First thing I'm gonna do is get my board and go out," Carl averred.
"Your board?" Lori said.
"Surfboard."
"Oh."
"You'll love it."
"It's a nice beach."
I pulled out the communications device, thinking to test it out. I looked at its grainy surface. It was covered with the same half-visible geometrical lines and squiggles that I'd seen on the ship's material. I held it near my mouth.
"Arthur?"
There was a moment's delay, then: "Yes, dearie?"
"Testing," I told him.
"Receiving you fine," Arthur said, his voice reproducing with high fidelity.
"Good. Where are you?"
"Oh, the back side of the moon, hovering at about two hundred kilometers."
"Really? See anything interesting?"
"Nope. Frankly, I'm bored. I think I'm going to hibernate until you need me."
"How long will it take you to get here if we need you in a hurry?"
"Oh, about ten minutes, if I hurry."
"Maybe you should stay in Earth orbit."
"If you want. I might be detected, though."
I agreed. "Yeah, you might. Stay put, and we'll contact you later."
"Have fun."
"By the way, what are our chances of getting back to Microcosmos?"
"Fair," Arthur said. "Since I know where we are, it makes it fairly easy. You just have to aim for the center of the universe."
"The center of the universe?"
"Fourth dimensionally speaking, that's where Microcosmos is, almost all the way back to the beginning of the universe. It's a little off-center though, by about one or two billion years."
"Oh," I said. "Anything else?"
"Yeah. If another ship like yours entered the solar system, would you have any way of detecting it?"
"Yes, but that's not going to happen," Arthur told me.
"Why?"
"Because this is the only ship of its kind ever built."
"What about the chance of encountering the ship's paradoxical double? You call it a spacetime ship: Doesn't that mean it's a time machine?"
"In a way," Arthur said thoughtfully, "but I don't think there's much chance of it happening."
Neither did I.
16
I told Arthur that we'd keep in touch, and signed off.
We headed north on the Coast Highway for a few kilometers, then turned right at a sign which read Topanga Canyon Boulevard and followed a winding road bearing up into the hills. Eventually, Carl made a right onto a gravel road, then a left into a driveway leading back to a beige-painted clapboard cottage with a small beetle-shaped automobile parked beside it.
Carl pulled up in front of the house and turned the motor off.
"Friends?" I asked.
"Yeah, one friend. A guy, a little older than me. He's a writer."
"What's he write?"
"TV scripts, movies, stuff like that. I know he did a Gunsmoke, and I think he wrote a version of some big Hollywood movie-one of those Roman Empire epics. I can't think of the name of it. Anyway, his name wasn't on the credits. A couple of friends of mine used to come over here and mess around, watch old movies, listen to jazz records."
"Records?" Darla asked.
"Uh… recorded music."
"Oh, I see."
"Anyway, he's home. He's gonna think I've totally flipped when I tell him what's happened."
Lori silently mouthed, Gunsmoke?
We got out. Carl banged on the front door. No one answered, and Carl banged again. Faint sounds of upbeat music came from within.
Carl was ready to knock a third time when the door was opened by a youngish dark-haired man wearing black-rimmed eyeglasses, a short-sleeved yellow pullover shirt, and dark pants. He had on leather moccasins and carried a carved briar pipe. He looked friendly but impatient.
"Carl!" he said. "Hey, I'm working." Puzzled, he glanced at Darla, Lori, and me, then said to Carl, "What's up?"
"Need your help. We're in a jam."
"A jam?" He eyed me again, scrutinizing my maroon starrigger's jacket. "Yeah?" He looked Carl up and down. "Are you guys shooting something?"
"Huh?" Carl answered.
"What's with the costumes?"
"It's a long story."
The man nodded. "I've a feeling I'm going to hear it. Come on in." He swung the door back, turned and walked inside. We followed him in.
The living room was really a work space. There were three debris-littered desks, a half-dozen loaded bookcases, one sofa, and a few chairs. A piece of equipment which I recognized to be a typewriter sat on one desk amid piles of manuscript, stacks of periodicals, and other paraphernalia. Besides clogging the shelves, books lay everywhere, piled in stacks on the desks, on the floor, and on the furniture. The place did have the look of a writer's lair.
"Dave," Carl said, "these are some friends of mine. Uh, this is Jake……
"Hi," Dave said, shaking my hand.
"Dave Feinmann."
"And this is Darla," Carl said.
"Hello, Darla. And you're…?"
"Lori."
"Hello, Lori."
Dave went to a cabinet containing a rack of equipment that, from the look of it, was a device for playing audio disks, something I'd never seen in my life. He turned a knob, and the music, which sounded like early jazz, faded into the background. He cleared some books off the furniture and motioned for us to sit down, taking a seat himself in front of the typewriter. He lit his pipe, cocking his head toward the typewriter. "Doing a treatment for an episode of this new science fiction series. Producer's a friend of mine. Looks like they've sold the pilot."