Sure enough, the armsmen were holding a quick conference, darting glances at one another while they kept their blasters trained on the company.
"Shake 'em up a little," Chornoi advised. "Expand the field."
Gwen frowned, but the moire moved away from them on all sides. It touched the clear wall, then went through it.
The armsmen went rigid, staring. Then one of them barked an order, and they began to retreat to the "up" escalator. Slowly, they disappeared from sight, one by one, backwards.
When the last was gone, Gwen released her breath in a huge sigh. "Tell me, sin that thou dost seem to know— how can I dissipate this bubble of force, without the explosion thou didst speak of?"
Chornoi frowned. "Think you can let all that energy go, slowly?"
"Aye, that I can. Yet where shall it go when I do release it?"
Chornoi expelled a sigh of relief. "Into the wall, Miz Gallowglass. That's no problem, thank Heaven. Just take us over next to one of the rock walls, and let the power discharge."
Gwen looked puzzled, but she moved slowly over to the nearest solid wall.
"That's it, so the bubble's just touching it," Chornoi prompted. "Now, as it gets smaller, move closer to the wall, so the bubble stays in contact. Okay, try letting go."
Gwen scowled in concentration, and sparks cracked like pistol shots, wherever the skin of the bubble touched the wall.
Rod watched in awe as the power grounded itself out, wondering how he'd ever be able to embrace Gwen again.
"It's bedrock," Chornoi explained as the bubble shrank. "The energy goes through the wall, on down into the bones of the very earth itself. It's big, Miz Gallowglass, very big. There's a lot of rock there to soak up power."
"Mayhap it soaks not swiftly enow," Gwen said, frowning. "The stone doth glow."
They looked and, sure enough, the rock wall had turned cherry red.
"I think the bedrock can take it." Chornoi frowned. "After all, the bubble's almost gone, and the stone's not softened yet."
Rod nodded. "As long as it's only red, we're probably okay."
"Tis gone," Gwen sighed, as the last of the power jumped into the wall in one final pistol-shot spark. "Now whither do we go?"
"Why, into a tube-car, of course." Chornoi grinned. "Shall we?"
They waited by the door in the clear wall for five minutes or so. It was five minutes too long for Rod; he kept glancing back at the escalators with apprehension. But finally, a tube-car swooshed up to the door and hissed to a stop. The door rolled back, and a stream of people filed out.
"Let 'em go, let 'em go," Chornoi murmured. "The more of them who get off, the more room there is for us."
Finally, they could step aboard. There were only about twenty people in the car, so they were able to take four seats that faced each other, but were well away from anyone else.
Gwen glanced nervously at the door. "When will it start?"
"It already did." Chornoi smiled, amused. "Smooth ride, isn't it?"
"It is, indeed." Gwen's eyes were wide with astonishment. "Yet tell me—how is't we ride? Wherefore hath that little man's 'superiors' not halted all carriages near to us?"
"They can't," Chornoi explained. "They'd have to shut off power to this whole sector, and that would leave thousands of people trapped until they could find us. And I think they realize that if they leave us alone in the dark in a tunnel-complex like this, they might never find us."
Rod's face was wooden; he was filled with sullen resentment, hearing Chornoi explain the facts of the situation to Gwen. He glared around him, looking for an outlet for the emotion—surely it couldn't be jealousy?
There! That gleaming, modest, inch-wide circlet on the front wall. "Smile," he advised, "we're on somebody's screen."
The other three turned around, staring at the front of the car. But Rod's eyes narrowed as he glared at it, and the faintest whiff of smoke coiled out of the vent nearest it. Passengers in the front of the car began to sniff, frowning.
"Neatly done." Gwen sounded surprised. "Yet wherefore, husband? What harm was there in it?"
"It was an electronic eye," Rod explained, "and when we decide to get off this high-speed sausage, I'd rather the security people didn't know exactly where we did it."
"Ah! Well thought!" Gwen swept the rest of the car with a thoughtful gaze. "Nay—I sense no more of them…"
Rod stared. She could sense electromagnetic fields now, too?
Gwen shook her head with decision. "Nay, only the one."
"Makes sense," Chornoi snorted. "No doubt the Proletarian Eclectic State of Terra was too cheap to put more than one audio and one video pickup on each car."
Rod's mouth tightened, though he had a fleeting thought that Chornoi might have been trying to be tactful. Irritated, he directed a glare at the small grille in the ceiling in the center of the car, thinking searing thoughts. When smoke curled out of it, he relaxed. "Okay. Audio's out now, too."
Yorick nodded, satisfied. "No way they can tell where we get out now."
Rod frowned at a sudden thought. "But they don't have to, do they? They just have to detail a bunch of guards at every station." He turned to Chornoi. "How many do we have coming up?"
She had paled. "Only one—the Canary Islands. After that, the next stop is Puerto Rico."
"So." Rod leaned back, pursing his lips. "We've got one chance."
"Why bother?" Yorick settled back, grinning. "I always liked the Western Hemisphere."
Rod suffered a shy grin. "Well, actually, any place will do fine." The realization suddenly hit him like a bottleful of champagne. "Hey! We're home! This is Terra—the real, bona fide ancestral home of humanity! The planet where we evolved!"
Yorick cocked an eyebrow. "Never been here before?"
Rod shook his head. "Heard about it, though. Lots."
Gwen was looking from one to the other, totally lost.
"This is the planet people started out from, Miz Gallowglass," Chornoi explained. "Your ancestors spread out from here in starships, in all directions. They colonized the planets you live on now."
Awe filled Gwen's face.
"There's still the problem of getting off," Yorick reminded, "without getting arrested."
Chornoi's gaze roamed the car. "Most of these people have luggage, don't they?"
"They do?" Yorick sat up, looking here and there all about the car. "Son of a gun! I suppose those shoulder bags could be suitcases."
"Sure. You don't need much room to pack a weekend's clothes."
"I'll never get used to this compact clothing you folks use," Yorick sighed. "Personally, I always thought we should leave spider silk to the arachnids."
Chornoi smiled. "Okay, primitive. What backward planet did you come from?"
"You'd be surprised." The caveman looked wary. "But I gotta admit, it is handy having a suit that can fold as flat as a board."
Chornoi frowned. "What's a 'board'?"
Rod said quickly, "So they've all got luggage. You're not thinking what I think you're thinking, are you?"
"I think so." Chornoi nodded at a nearby passenger. "He's about your size, and he's got some clothes to spare."
"Of course, we would have to knock him out," Rod reminded her.
Chornoi nodded, scowling. "That's the part I don't like. But it won't do him any permanent damage—and when he wakes up, he'll never know it was you who robbed him."
"We'll leave cash." Yorick eased a flat wallet out of his pocket.
Rod stared. "You've got PEST credits?"
"Sure." Yorick shrugged. "What kind of a traveler would I be, if I left home without some of the cash of the country I was going to?"
A time-traveler, Rod thought, but he had to admit the sense of what Yorick said. A person who was going to travel chronologically, should naturally take the same precautions as a person who was going to travel geographically. It was just that he couldn't count on being able to exchange currency once he got to his destination…"