“Everybody! Listen up!” she shouted. “Lori, wake up! We’ve got trouble!”
Lori stirred and shook his head to clear it. “Huh? What?”
“They’ve switched us south onto another line,” she told them as they gathered around the tiny woman.
“’They’?” Lori asked. “Who’s ‘they’?”
“If I knew that for sure, I could deal with them!” Mavra snapped. “Never mind that now. Somebody with influence who definitely doesn’t want me to get up to the Well first, that’s for sure. Anybody here a good judge of land speed? About what speed do you think this car is making now?”
It was Julian who spoke up. “At its maximum, no more than two hundred kilometers an hour,” she stated with a certainty that surprised them. “At average, about one hundred forty.”
“That’s a fair enough estimate,” Mavra responded, impressed.
“You were never in astronaut training.”
“That’s right! I’d forgotten you were a spacer! Okay, and according to this cheap watch I bought months ago, we’ve been going for three and a half hours. That would mean we’re about two-thirds of the way, or were when we were switched. At the angle we’re now traveling, if it stays fairly constant, we’ll still reach the coast, but way, way south of where we want to be. There’s only one decent harbor on the west coast, or so I’m told; the coastal waters are otherwise too shallow. Mostly small towns along there dependent on rail. I’d say that they’re aiming to bring us in down there at one of the small towns on the southwest border, maybe the southernmost one, at or after dusk.”
“But why? That’s the question,” Lori said, frowning.
“That’s easy enough. We miss our ship, we’ve got a long, slow walk up, since we can’t trust the trains anymore, and we’re in the kind of area where we always will stick out like sore thumbs.”
“But we can’t walk, not in this humidity and gravity!” Julian protested. “At least I can’t!”
“This is not as much of a problem for us,” Tony pointed out. “If need be, I could carry you and Mavra, too, and I am certain that Anne Marie could carry Lori.”
“Of course,” the other centauress replied. “It is a bit more difficult for us, and we have to go slower because of the burden on these thin legs, but you would hardly add to the burden.”
Mavra shook her head. “Uh uh. We might do that for a short distance but not a long one. Not only do I want out of here, I want to get lost. At least to whoever’s behind this. And the last thing I want to do is make a grand march under these conditions to a place where somehow I know they won’t have a ship for us.”
“But what is the alternative?” Tony asked her.
“If we keep going this way, we’ll come in to the southwesternmost yard in a small town almost at the Gekir border. Gekir’s a nontech hex and I’ve never been there, but my experience has been that if you want to get lost, get into a nontech hex. No mass transportation, but no mass communications, either. Nontechs are also the most dangerous for a lot of reasons, but while I don’t remember much about them, what was said indicates that the Gekir are not a mean or hostile people, and there’s some trade between there and Itus. As to what kind of creatures they are, I haven’t a clue, even though we might or might not have seen them among the races back in the capital. If we’re lucky, there might be some kind of sailing vessels that call along the coast. It’s worth a try.”
“But if whoever is chasing you is influential enough to divert our railcar, they will have people watching out for us at the town, won’t they?” Julian asked worriedly.
“Yes, so we’ll have to get off before that point and avoid the town. It shouldn’t be too hard to do. They’re bound to have a decoupling yard just before the town to route the various cars to loading areas. When the train slows, we get off, fast. It’ll still be moving, so watch yourselves, but it should be moving at a crawl, at least up to the switch. Tony, I assume you and Anne Marie could jump off.”
“I don’t think that would be a problem, but we’ll have to time it right,” Tony replied. “I don’t think either of us should risk a broken ankle at this point, and the heavier gravity is a major threat. Wait a moment! Anne Marie, come give me a hand here.”
The two centauresses went over to the left side and studied the short staked fence. “They look just placed in,” Anne Marie said, and with both hands tried to pry one up. She tried as hard as she could, but it wouldn’t budge. “No go, I’m afraid, dear.”
Tony got close beside her. “Both of us together, then.”
They tried, but it was as if the panel were welded on.
Julian came over and looked at the panel as well, bending down to see what might be holding it in. “I think it’s more magnets,” she said at last. “This train runs on the basis of magnetic polarity. There are two strong electromagnets underneath, one the track and the other on the undercarriage. When power is applied, they repel, we float essentially friction-free, and by moving one set, speed can be quickly achieved or slowed, even stopped on a dime. But the stakes, I bet, are matched to the polarity of the undercarriage. When it’s powered, they’re pulled tight.” She thought a moment. “I wonder if there are any dead spots.”
“Dead spots?” one of them asked.
“Yes. Have you ever ridden on a subway—underground, metro, or whatever—or an electric-powered train? There’s often points where the track is either not powered because of some repair or connector or the power source changes. The lights might flicker or even go off, but it’s brief and the train’s forward momentum keeps it rolling until it gets to the next powered section. I thought I felt a slight loosening at one point while I was leaning on it here, and there were the vibrations rattling the stakes briefly, but then it was tight again. If there’s another, then in that brief moment this panel should be able to be pulled. If it’s really held by the electromagnets, that is.”
“There is only one way to find out,” Tony said. “I will just stand here and pull on it and see.”
Although it was a rather simple explanation of the principle, Lori found himself momentarily taken aback by Julian’s sophisticated knowledge, even though he knew her background. He hadn’t been used to her being very assertive of late, and it gave him oddly mixed feelings he neither liked nor wanted to deal with. Julian had come up almost effortlessly with the solution to a problem of the sort that only seemed obvious when it was explained. The rattling had happened every few minutes off and on since they boarded, yet only Julian had put it together. Although he was quite proud of her, the two warring halves of his nature could not have been more divided on interpretation. The Lori Sutton part was cheering; the Lori of Alkhaz part was furious that she’d just given it to them all rather than tell him in private so that he could bring it up to the group.
Several minutes passed, and a bored Tony, feeling circulation going in her arms, was just about to give it up when suddenly the panel came up and she staggered back a bit, barely keeping balance. It didn’t come all the way out but was now held only by two flat pins, no longer flush with the flatcar floor.
“If need be, I could probably kick it down at this point,” Tony commented, “but I think that Lori might do better pushing up from beneath. Just be sure you don’t fall off the train when it comes up!”
Lori looked at it dubiously. “Yeah, right,” he said, but lay down, got his body in as close as he could with his legs well beyond the almost-free panel, and pushed against the very solid-feeling section.