We were a little hazy as to what time of day we were aiming for. As I remembered, I was interrogated sometime in the early morning, made an escape attempt, and got thrown in the jug around dawn. I spent maybe two hours in there before blacking out, and I estimated I was out for only a few minutes.
We seemed to have hit it right on the button. Goliath's fierce sun was still low in the sky. Maxwellville came into view, a raw, ugly little burg of quickie buildings and pop-up domes. It looked like any pioneer settlement. It took us a while to pinpoint the Militia station. The city was bustling with early-morning traffic, and there were a good number of pedestrians up and about at this hour. Everything would have to be done in broad daylight and in front of witnesses.
"Can the ship be seen?" I asked.
"Only if you look real hard," Arthur said. "Don't worry. Sam's going to raise a few eyebrows when I levitate him down, though."
"Can you extend the effect to cover a few blocks?"
"You mean so it will affect people outside the station?"
"Yeah, the less witnesses, the better."
"Well, sure. Any way you want to work it. But everybody is going to wonder what the hell happened."
"Let 'em wonder. I just don't want them to see anything."
"Can do, dearie."
I was ready to draw a map, from memory, of the inside of the station, but Arthur magically produced a piece of flimsy material on which was inscribed what looked like an architect's floor plan.
"The ship's probing devices don't miss much," Arthur said.
Sam familiarized himself with the layout. Then he crumpled the clothlike artifact, which had been extruded from the bottom of the control panel, and shoved it in a pocket.
"Well, I'm ready. Do I need burnt cork on my face? How 'bout I just take a bottle?"
"Wait a minute," I said. "Arthur, don't human brain scans change over time?"
"A little. Why?"
"Can't you tune the effect to exempt me but not my double?"
Arthur scowled. "Can't make it easy for me, can you? Well, I'll see."
Sam was eyeing me dubiously. "I'm going along, Sam," I told him.
"Whatever for?"
"Something tells me I should. Darla's down there."
"Okay. I guess you know what you're doing."
"Oh, sure," I said, wondering what the hell I was doing. Arthur found that he could indeed do what I had asked. We were ready.
Sam and I went out to the cargo bay and stood in front of the puckered valve that was the door. I held the communicator up and spoke into it.
"Any time, Arthur."
The door dilated. The city spread out before us, bright and busy in the morning sun. The smell of brewing coffee came to my nostrils on a fresh, cool breeze. We were about a hundred meters above the Militia station.
"We gotta jump, don't we?" I said.
"That's what the spook said."
We jumped. It was a fast trip down, and I nearly swallowed my heart. But we hit gently enough to take the impact with nothing more than a bend of the knees. I looked around. We were in the parking lot behind the station. Three pedestrians were sprawled on the near sidewalk. There were two Militiamen passed out in a parked police vehicle. Another constable had wrecked his bubble-topped interceptor into a heat pump, apparently having succumbed as he was driving into the lot.
We dashed in through the garage.
"What are you going to do?" Sam asked when we were inside.
I looked around at the blue-uniformed bodies slumped over desks, lying on the floor, collapsed in swivel chairs. "Go do it, Sam. I'll meet you here in five minutes."
I walked through the white, aseptic hallways. I knew where I was going, and didn't tarry. I had seen this movie before.
Darla was there, in Petrovsky's office. But there was something different. She was seated, her head down on the desk, her outstretched right hand seeming to reach for something in Petrovsky's left. It was Sam's key.
Details, details. Now I knew what I was here for. I took the black and orange plastic box from Petrovsky and slipped it into Darla's pocket. I lifted her head and held it in my arms.
"Hello again, darling," I said, after kissing her flushed cheek. Her eyes were open but unfocused. I looked into them, and they looked through me. Except for the briefest instant. Her lips moved almost imperceptibly. She moaned softly.
I looked at her for a while, then kissed her again. I rested her head on the desktop, trying to fashion her body into the position I had found her in, but her body seemed to have gone slack, and she wouldn't stay up. I checked my watch. I was running late, so I stretched her out on the floor in front of the desk, face down, head resting on her right arm.
"We'll meet again, darling," I said. I left. Sam was waiting for me.
"C'mon! H. G. Wells I ain't!"
We ran out into the lot. And there, standing almost where we'd landed, were two strange beings whom I knew to be members of a race called the Ryxx. It's a sort of combination whistle, chirp, and click.
"Greetings, Roadbrothers," one of them squawked through his translator box.
Sam tweeted a greeting, then said to me. "I guess Arthur's gadget doesn't work on nonhumans."
The other was holding a strange-looking weapon on us. The first looked up at the sky, its two round sad eyes searching. Finally its eyes fixed on something-the ship, presumably. I looked up and saw a shimmering in the air, nothing more.
"Superior technology," the first one said. Its fat ostrichlike body seemed to heave a sigh. "Very, very superior. We are puzzled and vexed."
"It's pretty hard to explain," Sam said. He whistled something.
The second birdlike creature said, "I am of her nest, although I am not an issue of her egg."
"Well, please convey my warmest compliments to (chirp whistle-click) for me. Tell her that the straw of my nest is always fresh for her visit, and that I hope the issue of her egg will be many and prosperous. That comes from Sam McGraw."
This seemed to impress the hell out of them.
"So, it is true," the first one said. "The many strange tales told of you and your egg. Is it true that you have the Roadmap?"
I said, "It is true. But hear me. You will never get it. No one will. I will never give it up, not to anyone in the universe. It is mine, and I will keep it."
"Hello?" came Arthur's voice from the communicator, which I held in my hand. "Hell-o-o?"
"Yeah, Arthur?"
"Um… want me to make fried chicken out of them?"
I glared at the two ungainly bird creatures. Their faces were impassive behind transparent atmospheric-assist masks. The one holding the weapon lowered his winglike arm.
"No," I said.
"Upsy daisy."
We rose into the air. On the way up, Sam said, "I've always wanted to start a religion, and God forgive me, if this keeps up, I just might:"
We tacked against the wind of time once more. The displacement was about eight months this time. We directed Arthur to a farm planet on the outskirts of Terran Maze. People I knew and trusted lived here.
Arthur landed on a deserted road, and I backed the rig out of the ship.
"Time to say good-bye," Arthur said. "It's been interesting, to say the least."
"Yeah," I said. "Thanks for everything, Art, old boy."
"Boy? You know I'm sexless. They say I'm missing a lot, but what the hell. Anyway…" He put his absurdly small hand on my shoulder. "Listen, I'm sorry you lost so much. There wasn't much I could do about it…." He seemed to drift off into thought.
"Here," I said, handing him the communicator.
"Uh, no. No. You go ahead and keep it. The ship has plenty. Keep it as a souvenir. Besides, you might want to call me someday."
I shrugged and put it in my pocket.
We watched the ship rise and become an olive drab dot in the sky. Then it was gone.