The fog got thicker, and the lines faded ― then, instantaneously, the fog was gone as we passed the flashing red commit markers and penetrated the portal's force-field shell. The shells keep out atmosphere but allow solid matter to go through. It's always struck me as pertinent to ask what would happen if the machinery generating the shell faded. As far as anyone knows, it's never happened, and no one seems to worry about it but me. Nor is much sleep lost fretting over the possibility that a portal could completely fail and drop its cylinders, which has never happened either, at least not in the known mazes.
We felt the fleeting tug of an unseen force, work of the grasping gravitational fingers around us. "Watch it, Sam."
"This has always been a rough portal. Needs recalibrating."
Whump!
The rig dropped, slamming onto the Groombridge Skyway. The jungle was gone, and around us stretched the bleak rolling terrain of the satellite, bathed in the dull red glow of Groom-bridge 34-B's dwarf primary, overhung by a black starry canopy. The gas giant loomed off to our right and was in gibbous phase, taking up more than 45 degrees of sky.
"Remind me to file a complaint at the nearest Skyway maintenance office," Sam kidded, knowing full well that the re-calibration would be done in time by the portal itself. Like the Skyway roadbed, the portals were self-repairing. "One of these days, we're going to materialize under the roadway," he said, repeating a bugbear that was part of the lore or the road. "Really, I wonder what the hell would happen. Explosion?"
"Sam, you know damn well it can't happen." I had rung the changes on this argument a hundred times in a hundred different beerhalls. A portal transition is a question of geometry, not of matter transmission. The spaces on either side are contiguous, not congruent. We had just experienced a misalignment in which the ingress side was higher than the egress side. If the situation were reversed, and the difference were a few centimeters, it'd be like going over a bump. No problem. However, if the misalignment were larger, say a meter or more, you'd run smack up against a cross section of roadmetal delimited by the aperture, in which case you'd stay on the cylinder side of the portal and get smeared. But no explosion per se. For the nth time, I explained this all patiently to Sam, and he laughed.
"Just ribbing you, son. I like to see your hackles rise when you argue with dumb truckdrivers. But tell me, why don't we hear of accidents like that?"
"For the same reason that all portal accidents are hard to verify. But who knows? Maybe there's some safety mechanism, or maybe there's something about the nature of warped space-time that precludes it. I don't know. It's a wonder they can make the alignments with any degree of accuracy over dozens of light-years. There are lots of things about the Skyway we don't know. One of the biggest mysteries is why there's a road at all."
"Well," Sam said, "my guess has always been that they were used to haul heavy equipment from the entrance point to the next cylinder site during construction."
"A technology that controls gravity so well makes vehicle roads seem unnecessary. Doesn't it?"
"You have me there. Hell, maybe there was surplus money in the budget and the bureaucrats couldn't bring themselves to hand back the cash. Had to spend it, bureaucrats being what they are all over the universe."
"I take it you're joking."
"Not entirely. Compared to the staggering engineering feat of building the portals themselves, laying down a self-maintaining road between them would have been a breeze. An afterthought."
"I never looked at it that way," I said, scratching my head. "But, damn it, why did they plunk the cylinders down on the surface of planets? Why not in space?"
"Too many questions, Jake, and we don't have many answers."
The conversation had jogged my memory. "Which reminds me, I had a very interesting talk with Jerry Spacks back at the motel."
I related what had been said. Sam didn't comment for a while, then said, "Sounds like roadapples to me, Jake."
"My sentiments exactly." I looked back at Darla, who had been following the exchange with interest. "What do you mink?"
"About what? The Skyway, or the stories about you?"
"Either. Both."
"I believe it. The story about you, I mean. If anyone could discover a backtime route, it would be you guys."
"Thanks." I looked up at the gas giant. It was awesome and majestic, painted with pastel parallel bands, dotted with the black beauty mark of another moon in transit. Below, the powdery regolith of the moon's surface was molded into sensuous low mounds, peeked here and there by blur-edged craters.
I turned back to Darla. "By the way, the question never came up before, but where were you going when we picked you up on TC–II?"
"Mach City," she answered without hesitation. "I've spent time there before, singing. But I was looking for a job as a nighclub manager. Had a line on a job in the city."
"Uh huh." What I didn't know about this woman would overload a rig or two. "Well, folks, what do we do now? Any suggestions? The floor is open, even to Cheetah here."
"We have three choices," Sam informed us, "since there are three portals on this planet. One, we can go back the way we came. Shall we put the matter in the form of a motion?"
A pair of strangled screams from me and Darla, mine being louder.
"The motion has not been carried. Two, we continue our original itinerary and deliver our load of scientific equipment to Chandrasekhar Deep Space Observatory on Uraniborg, and take our chances. Nix on that, too, since Wilkes doubtless knows we're bound for there. That leaves portal number three."
"Which goes to the boondocks of Terran Maze," I put in.
"Well, we could go to Uraniborg and not stop," Darla suggested. "We could stay on Route Twelve and go through to Thoth Maze."
"Hm. The Thoth are friendly enough," I ruminated. But what would we do there?" No answer. "Hell, we have no choice, really."
"The ayes have it," Sam pronounced, "but the point is moot, because something's coming up fast on our tail. And I mean fast."
I unbuckled from the shotgun seat and almost cracked my head against the roof getting into me driver's seat, forgetting the reduced gravity. I checked the scanners.
"I see what you mean. Too fast for a civilian vehicle, not a rig. Either alien or a Colonial cruiser."
"It's a cruiser all right," Sam confirmed, "and why do I get the funny feeling he's going to pull us over?"
"I'm getting it, too. There's not much we can do, though."
"But we can match him gun for gun."
"No, Sam. We've already got Wilkes on our case. I don't want to tangle with the Colonial Authority."
"Yep, he's got his sye-reen a-blarin'. I'm getting it on all frequencies. Merte!"
"Well…" I sighed and resigned myself to the depressing inevitable, braked, and started pulling over. Just for the hell of it, I decelerated as fast as I could, and sure enough, the cops overshot us, hotrodding it as they were in their Mach-one-capable reaction-drive interceptor.
Sam laughed. "Look at 'em, the assholes."
The road ahead lit up blue-white with their retrofire, and the poor darlings found themselves about half a klick downroad from us. They had to back on the shoulder, which would probably put them in a good mood right off the bat.
"Getting pretty cheeky, aren't they?" Sam wondered. "I mean, pulling us over like this."