Get rid of this clown from the future, he thought contentedly; meet the Nexus Point instead of Harse and there was the future, ripe for the taking! He knew where the rescuers would be - and, above all, he knew how to talk. Every man has one talent and Mooney’s was salesmanship.
All the years wasted on peddling dime-store schemes like frozen-food plans! But this was the big time at last, so maybe the years of seasoning were not wasted, after all.
‘That for you, Uncle Lester,’ he muttered. Harse looked up from his viewer angrily and Mooney cleared his throat. ‘I said,’ he explained hastily, ‘we’re almost at the - the Nexus Point.’
Snow was drifting down. The cab-driver glanced at the black, quiet library, shook his head and pulled away, leaving black, wet tracks in the thin snow.
The pale-eyed man looked about him irritably. ‘You!’ he cried, waking Mooney from a dream of possessing the next ten years of stock-market reports. ‘You! Where is this Vale of Cashmere?’
‘Right this way, Harse, right this way,’ said Mooney placatingly.
There was a wide sort of traffic circle - grand Army Plaza was the name of it - and there were a few cars going around it.
But not many, and none of them looked like police cars. Mooney looked up and down the broad, quiet streets.
‘Across here,’ he ordered, and led the time traveller towards the edge of the park. ‘We can’t go in the main entrance. There might be cops.’
‘Cops?’
‘Policemen. Law-enforcement officers. We’ll just walk down here a way and then hop over the wall. Trust me,’ said Mooney, in the voice that had put frozen-food lockers into so many suburban homes.
The look from those pale eyes was anything but a look of trust, but Harse didn’t say anything. He stared about with an expression of detached horror, like an Alabama gentlewoman condemned to walk through Harlem.
‘Now!’ whispered Mooney urgently.
And over the wall they went.
They were in a thicket of shrubs and brush, snow-laden, the snow sifting down into Mooney’s neck every time he touched a branch, which was always; he couldn’t avoid it. They crossed a path and then a road - long, curving, broad, white, empty. Down a hill, onto another path. Mooney paused, glancing around.
‘You know where you are. Going?’
‘I think so. I’m looking for cops.’ None in sight. Mooney frowned. What the devil did the police think they were up to? They passed laws; why weren’t they around to enforce them?
Mooney had his landmarks well in mind. There was the Drive, and there was the fork he was supposed to be looking for. It wouldn’t be hard to find the path to the Vale. The only thing was, it was kind of important to Mooney’s hope of future prosperity that he find a policeman first. And time was running out.
He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch - self-winding, shockproof, non-magnetic; the man in the hotel’s jewellery shop had assured him only yesterday that he could depend on its timekeeping as on the beating of his heart. It was nearly a quarter of one.
‘Come along, come along!’ grumbled Harse.
Mooney stalled: ‘I - I think we’d better go along this way. It ought to be down there -’
He cursed himself. Why hadn’t he gone in the main entrance, where there was sure to be a cop? Harse would never have known the difference. But there was the artist in him that wanted the thing done perfectly, and so he had held to the pretense of avoiding police, had skulked and hidden. And now -
‘Look!’ he whispered, pointing.
Harse spat soundlessly and turned his eyes where Mooney was pointing.
Yes. Under a distant light, a moving figure, swinging a nightstick.
Mooney took a deep breath and planted a hand between Harse’s shoulder blades.
‘Run!’ he yelled at the top of his voice, and shoved. He sounded so real, he almost convinced himself. ‘We’ll have to split up - I’ll meet you there. Now run!’
Oh, clever Mooney! He crouched under a snowy tree, watching the man from the future speed effortlessly away ... in the wrong direction.
The cop was hailing him; clever cop! All it had taken was a couple of full-throated yells and at once the cop had perceived that someone was in the park. But cleverer than any cop was Mooney.
Men from the future. Why, thought Mooney contentedly, no Mrs. Meyerhauser of the suburbs would have let me get away with a trick like that to sell her a freezer. There’s going to be no problem at all. I don’t have to worry about a thing. Mooney can take care of himself!
By then, he had caught his breath - and time was passing, passing.
He heard a distant confused yelling. Harse and the cop? But it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was getting to the Nexus Point at one minute past one.
He took a deep breath and began to trot. Slipping in the snow, panting heavily, he went down the path, around the little glade, across the covered bridge.
He found the shallow steps that led down to the Vale.
And there it was below him: a broad space where walks joined, and in the space a thing shaped like a dinosaur egg, rounded and huge. It glowed with a silvery sheen.
Confidently, Mooney started down the steps towards the egg and the moving figures that flitted soundlessly around it. Harse was not the only time traveller, Mooney saw. Good, that might make it all the simpler. Should he change his plan and feign amnesia, pass himself off as one of their own men?
Or-
A movement made him look over his shoulder.
Somebody was standing at the top of the steps. ‘Hell’s fire,’ whispered Mooney. He’d forgotten all about that aboriginal law; and here above him stood a man in a policeman’s uniform, staring down with pale eyes.
No, not a policeman. The face was - Harse’s.
Mooney swallowed and stood rooted.
‘You!’ Harse’s savage voice came growling. ‘You are to stand. Still?’
Mooney didn’t need the order; he couldn’t move. No twentieth-century cop was a match for Harse, that was clear; Harse had bested him, taken his uniform away from him for camouflage - and here he was.
Unfortunately, so was Howard Mooney.
The figures below were looking up, pointing and talking; Harse from above was coming down. Mooney could only stand, and wish - wish that he were back in Sea Bright, living on cookies and stale tea, wish he had planned things with more intelligence, more skill - perhaps even with more honesty. But it was too late for wishing.
Harse came down the steps, paused a yard from Mooney, scowled a withering scowl - and passed on.
He reached the bottom of the steps and joined the others waiting about the egg. They all went inside.
The glowing silvery colours winked and went out. The egg flamed purple, faded, turned transparent and disappeared.
Mooney stared and, yelling a demand for payment, ran stumbling down the steps to where it had been. There was a round thawed spot, a trampled patch - nothing else.
They were gone...
Almost gone. Because there was a sudden bright wash of flame from overhead - cold silvery flame. He looked up, dazzled. Over him, the egg was visible as thin smoke, hovering. A smoky, half-transparent hand reached out of a port. A thin, reedy voice cried: ‘I promised you. Pay?’
And the silvery dispatch-case sort of thing, the survival kit, dropped soundlessly to the snow beside Mooney.
When he looked up again, the egg was gone for good.
He was clear back to the hotel before he got a grip on himself - and then he was drunk with delight. Honest Harse! Splendidly trustable Harse! Why, all this time, Mooney had been so worried, had worked so hard - and the whole survival kit was his, after all!