Behind him he sensed a movement and he swung around so hurriedly that his fingers loosened on the flashlight and it fell upon the floor and rolled.
Out of the darkness a voice spoke.
“Shep,” it said, with full heartiness, “that was very neatly done.”
Blaine froze and hopelessness flooded in.
For this was the end, he knew. He had come as far as he was going to. He had finally run his race.
He knew that hearty voice. He never could forget it.
The man standing in the darkness of the shed was his old friend, Kirby Rand!
TWENTY-FOUR
Rand was a blacker blob in the darkness as he stepped forward and picked the flashlight off the floor. He pivoted to turn the light full upon the star machine and in the flood of brightness tiny little dust motes could be seen dancing in the heart of the machine.
“Yes,” said Rand, “very neatly done. I don’t know how you did it and I don’t know why you did it, but you most certainly have taken care of it.”
He turned the flashlight off and for a moment they stood silent in the darkness, relieved by the streaks of moonlight that came through the windows.
Then Rand said: “I suppose you know that Fishhook owes you a vote of thanks for this.”
“Come off of it,” Blaine told him, roughly. “You know very well it was not done for Fishhook.”
“Nevertheless,” said Kirby, “it happens that in this particular area our interests coincide. We could not let this machine stay lost. We could not allow it to remain in improper hands. You understand, of course.”
“Perfectly,” said Blaine.
Rand sighed. “I had expected trouble and if there is anything Fishhook doesn’t want, it’s trouble. Particularly when that trouble is out in the hinterlands.”
“There’s not been any trouble,” Blaine told him, “that needs to worry Fishhook.”
“I am glad to hear it. And you, Shep? How are you getting on?”
“Not too badly, Kirby.”
“That is nice,” said Kirby. “That is very nice. It makes me feel so good. And now, I would imagine, we should get out of here.”
He led the way across the floor back to the broken window and stood aside.
“You first,” he said to Blaine, “and I’ll be right behind you. I would ask, as one friend to another, that you not try to run away.”
“No need to fear,” Blaine told him dryly, then climbed quickly through the window.
He could run, of course, he told himself, but that would be extremely foolish, for there was no doubt Rand would have a gun and he would be quite efficient with it, even in the moonlight. And more than that, if there were any shooting, Harriet might come running to be of what help she could and if she got involved in this, then he’d be truly friendless. Otherwise, he told himself, almost prayerfully, Harriet would stay hidden in the willow clump. She would see what happened and in just a little while she’d have an angle figured out.
Harriet was, he told himself, the only hope he had.
He dropped out of the window and stood to one side for Rand to clamber through.
Rand hit the ground and turned toward him, just a bit too quickly, too much like a hunter, then he relaxed and chuckled.
“It was a slick trick, Shep,” he said. “Efficiently engineered. Someday you’ll have to tell me exactly how you did it. To steal a star machine is not an easy thing.”
Blaine gulped down his astonishment, and hoped the moonlight hid the look he knew must be upon his face.
Rand reached out a hand and took him companionably by the elbow.
“The car’s down here,” he said. “Right down by the road.”
They walked together across the patch of rustling weeds, and the land lay different now, no longer dark and fearsome, but a place of painted magic stretched out in the moonlight. To their right lay the town, a mass of darkened houses that looked more like mounds than houses, with the faint tracery of nude trees standing up like ragged paintbrushes reared against the eastern sky. To the west and north lay the silver prairie land, flat and featureless and made immense by its very lack of features.
And just down the road was the clump of willows.
Blaine shot a quick glance at the clump and there were only willows. There was no glint of moonlight bouncing off metal. He walked a pace or two, then took another look and this time, he knew, there could be no mistake. There was no car in that clump of willows. Harriet was gone.
Good girl, he thought. She had a lot of sense. She’d probably gotten out of there as soon as Rand showed up. She’d figure, more than likely, that the one way she’d be most valuable would be to make a getaway against another day.
“I don’t suppose,” said Rand, “that you have a place to stay.”
“No,” said Blaine, “I haven’t.”
“Bad town,” Rand told him. “They take this witchcraft-werewolf business seriously indeed. Cops stopped me twice. Warned me under cover. Told me very sternly it was for my own protection.”
“They’re all wrought up,” said Blaine. “Lambert Finn is here.”
“Oh, yes,” Rand said carelessly. “An old friend of ours.”
“Not of mine. I never met the man.”
“A charming soul,” said Rand. “A very charming one.”
Blaine said: “I know very little of him. Just what I have heard.”
Rand grunted.
“I would suggest,” he said, “that you spend the night at the Post. The factor will be able to find some place to bed you down. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could dig up a bottle, too. I suddenly feel the need of a monstrous slug of booze.”
“I could stand one myself,” Blaine told him.
For there was no sense of fighting now, no more sense than running. You went along with them and waited for your chance. They tried to throw you off your balance and you tried to throw them off theirs. And all along you knew, both of you might know, that it was a most polite but very deadly game.
Although he wondered why he bothered. After the last few weeks, he told himself, Fishhook would seem an engaging place. Even if they sent him to the detention resort in Baja California, it would be better than the prospect he faced in this Missouri river town.
They reached the car that sat beside the road, and Blaine waited for Rand to get underneath the wheel, then crawled in himself.
Rand started the engine but did not switch on the lights. He pulled the machine out into the roadway and went drifting down it.
“The police can’t really do much more,” he said, “than run you under cover, but there seems to me no point in getting tangled up with them if you can avoid it.”
“None at all,” said Blaine.
Rand avoided the center of the town, went sneaking down the side streets. Finally he cut back and went sliding up an alley, swung into a parking lot and stopped.
“Here we are,” he said. “Let’s go get that drink.”
The back door opened to his knock and they walked into the back room of the Trading Post. Most of the place, Blaine saw, was used as storage space, but one corner of it served as a living room. There was a bed and stove and table. There was a massive stone fireplace with a wood fire burning in it and comfortable chairs ranged in front of it.
Up near the door that went into the front part of the store stood a massive boxlike structure, and Blaine, although he’d never seen one, recognized it immediately as a transo — the matter transference machine which made the vast network of Trading Posts stretched around the globe an economic possibility. Through that box could come, with a moment’s notice, any of the merchandise for which any of the thousands of retail outlets might find itself in need.
This was the machine that Dalton had talked about that night at Charline’s party — the machine which he had said could wipe out the world’s transportation interests if Fishhook ever chose to put it in public use.
Rand waved a hand at one of the chairs. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said to Blaine. “Grant will rustle up a bottle. You have one, don’t you, Grant?”