Now that there was so much distraction back there, it would be a good time for Parker to make his move. He went around the corner of the jungle area and began to trot toward the main gates, down at the midpoint on this side of the park. He ran past Marooned! and then past the night watchman’s office, and slowed as he approached the gates. They’d have men on duty there, he didn’t know how many or where they’d be. He moved up carefully, the fence on his right and a snack bar on his left, the gates just ahead.
They were shut, probably locked. There was no one standing near them, not in sight anyway.
Naturally not. They wouldn’t want passers-by to see people standing around in here, it might cause somebody to call the cops. So they’d be undercover somewhere handy, where they could keep an eye on the gate.
“Hey! There he is, there he is!”
Parker spun around, the two guys were boiling out of the doorway of the night watchman’s shack, tugging into their coat pockets for their guns. He turned the other way, and the shouting had brought a couple more out of the Island Earth amusement-ride section the other side of the gates. One of them over there fired his gun while running and the bullet went nowhere in particular.
He couldn’t get to the gates. They were all too close, he’d be a fat target climbing up and over.
He looked both ways, and ran to the left, away from the gates, around the snack bar. Between here and the fun house a stream ran across, with an island in the middle of it containing picnic tables, small wooden bridges leading onto the island from both sides. Parker ran that way, meaning to go through the fun house again, but as he was crossing the little island two guys came running around the left side of the fun house, so he crossed the .bridge and veered off to the right, across the main roadway with the fountain down there to his left and the gates back the other way and the Voyage Through the Galaxy black-light ride straight ahead.
That was where Parker headed, with six of them now running after him, a couple of them firing, a couple more shouting, bringing the rest of them on the run.
Four
VOYAGE THROUGH the Galaxy. Only now it was just a barn. There were work lights on all over the place, leaving no shadows, the moons and planets and stars no longer seeming to hang in interstellar space. The building, a hollow shell, was a tall square, with the flimsy-looking track for the rockets the customers rode on twisting around up and down inside the building like a miniature indoor roller coaster.
This was the room Parker had strung with wires, and once inside he slowed down and moved more cautiously, remembering where he’d put the wires and avoiding them. Even with the lights on, the thin black wires couldn’t be seen at all unless you got very close and knew exactly where to look.
There was a red exit sign glowing across the way, over a pair of black metal doors with the usual push bar, and they were what Parker headed toward, moving with swift caution through the wires. And he was almost to those doors when the entrance behind him slammed open and they burst in.
There was one in front of the rest, and he came in running hard. Parker, his hands on the push bar, looked back and saw the guy run two paces at top speed before the first wire got him in the neck. His shoulders seemed to jerk back, his head ducked down as though to bounce his chin off his chest, and his legs continued to run for another half-step. Then they jerked up into the air, he seemed to lie horizontally in midair for just a second like something in a magician’s act, and then he crashed down backward onto the floor, clutching at his throat. He lay there, thrashing, squawking, grabbing at his throat, and the others began to pile in behind him.
Parker saw no more. He shoved open the doors and ran back out into the sunlight.
The Pleasure Island carousel was dead ahead. He ran around that to the right, hearing somebody start to shout again behind him. He ran hard, past the Hawaiian restaurant and the submarine ride, feeling his muscles loosening up more and more with the exercise, and the wax museum was just ahead and to his left.
He was going to have to go to ground again, he couldn’t just keep running until he wore himself out and they caught up with him, and for the moment there was no one in sight behind him. He veered to the left and ran into the wax museum and stopped just inside the door, keeping the door open barely enough so he could look out. He was breathing hard, but was warmer now from the running.
He watched, and saw a bunch of them run into view, over there by the underwater ride. It was unlikely he could ever lure one or two of them into one of those submarines, but if the unlikely happened he was ready. The hatches could be locked from the outside simply by turning a handle, and the length of pipe he’d put handy there would break the underwater portholes and fill the ship with water. It would be a nice way to get ride of a couple of them, but it was unlikely he could set it up.
For right now, all he wanted to do was keep out of their sight and catch his breath. So he stood there and watched through the crack in the door as they milled around the submarine ride for a minute and then moved off toward the fake mountain where the bobsled ride was.
Then something that looked like the kind of cart golfers ride in, with a yellow body and a pine-and-yellow-striped canvas canopy, came driving up from the direction of the Hawaiian restaurant, with one of the hoods at the wheel and old man Lozini sitting beside him. Lozini had the cops’ loud-hailer in his lap, and as they rode past the wax museum he put it to his mouth and his voice bellowed, “Come back here! Don’t run around like a bunch of damn fools! You lost him again!”
The cart came to a stop just beyond the wax museum, in the middle among the submarine ride, the bobsled ride, the wax museum and the Alcatraz Island mess-hall restaurant. Lozini called through the loud-hailer, “Get over here! Everybody get over here!”
They came. Parker counted this time, and counting Lozini, there were fourteen of them. Plus the cops, who weren’t present now.
Lozini didn’t bother with the loud-hailer once they were all gathered around him, but Parker could still hear him plainly. He started by demanding, “Who saw him last?”
There was a little shuffling around, a little discussion, and finally one of them decided he was the one. Lozini asked him where he’d last seen Parker, and he pointed over toward the submarine ride, saying, “Over there, comin around behind the restaurant.”
“Headed which way?”
“Just up here somewhere.”
“What was everybody doin over by that hill over there?”
“It’s a fake,” somebody said. “That’s all fake snow on there, it’s a bobsled ride or something. The mountain’s hollow inside, we figured he went in there.”
“Did he?”
“We don’t know, you called us back before we could look it over.”
“Because you were all runnin to the same place. He doesn’t have to be inside that fake mountain. What’s that over there?”
“The Alcatraz restaurant.”
“He could of got to there, too. Or over to that wax museum. He could of circled around this Hawaii restaurant here and got on inside there. I want two men to check out the mountain, two that restaurant there, two this restaurant over here, and two that wax museum. I want four men down at that fountain in the middle there. From down there you can see down every path all the way to the fence. Sooner or later he’s gonna move again, and he’ll have to cross one of those paths. If you see him, fire one shot, at him or in the air or any place you damn please. And holler. And take off after him. I don’t want to lose that son of a bitch again, he’s cost me too many men. All right, get moving.”
They got moving, and Lozini and his driver headed away again, back toward the fountain. Parker saw two men coming this way, and he moved away from the door and deeper into the building.