Race Against Time (10 page)

"You misunderstand. We can outmaneuver them because we have less to lose than they do. We can take risks they cannot—and they will not press us very hard."

"Maybe common sense is different in the Middle Kingdom.
Why
won't they press us hard?
Why
can we take risks they can't?"

"Consider the investment they have in us. Without us the enclaves are meaningless. Almost twenty years of time, and all those properties and personnel, wasted, if we should die."

"Die!" Betsy exclaimed, shocked.

"All that effort and expense wasted," Pei repeated. "So they will be exceedingly careful."

"But if—why should we risk our
lives?"
Betsy demanded, shaken again.

Pei turned on her the same calm gaze he had used on John in the park. "Our lives in captivity are not valuable, are they?"

The other three paused. John saw that none of them had thought of it precisely that way. Escape had been more of a game, without anything really serious—such as life itself—at stake.

"So what we are risking is very little," Pei continued. "We want to be free. Living in captivity may not be worse than death, but it is not a great deal
better.
We would be well advised to put our entire resources into the effort for what we desire and believe in, and they know that. They know that if they press us too hard, we may tumble and perish. Then they will have lost everything. But if we escape, they can always hope to find us again later."

"That does make macabre sense," John said. "So you think we can get away—if we have the nerve to do it."

Pei nodded.

The other craft was closing the gap. There could be only a few minutes before it caught up.

"Do
we have the nerve?" Betsy asked in a small voice.

"We'd better decide in a hurry, or they'll nab us while we're debating it," John pointed out. "Why don't we vote?"

"Vote?" That was Meilan, looking perplexed.

"That means each person says what he chooses, and the majority decides it."

"Strange system," Pei remarked, "but I choose to escape."

"So do I," John said. "What about you girls?"

Betsy hesitated only momentarily. "Yes."

They looked at Meilan. "I would prefer to recover the others," she said.

"The others?" John repeated.

"The people in the other enclave that we were going to fetch. Humé."

So she
had
met Humé! "I didn't mean to desert them!" John said. "Certainly we should pick them up. That's where we're headed now, but we'll have to lose that police cruiser first." Pei and Betsy nodded.

"Then, yes."

"Hang on!" John cried. "I'm putting this buggy on manual, and I don't exactly know what I'm doing!"

The manual control was a ball set in a magnetic clasp. When activated, it hovered within the little cage, touching nowhere. It was transparent with a gray opaque spot on top. Inside it he could see another shell, translucent red. Inside
that
was a third shell, translucent yellow, and so on. Somehow he was able to see the color of each level merely by concentrating on it. That would have been a very neat trick by the standards of twentieth-century earth. Here it was just a fixture.

When he switched over, the taxi stopped. Just like that. It hovered in place, and the pursuing ship gained at an alarming rate. Hastily, John put one finger on the surface of the ball and juggled it. The taxi rocked violently in the air. John grabbed for a handrail. The others laughed; they were already hanging on.

"There would be three primary axes of rotation," Pei said, hauling himself near. "Test each one cautiously."

"Gotcha. I can push the spot forward or backward or to either side, or I can spin the ball around." He put his finger on it and nudged the gray spot ever so slightly forward. The taxi descended slowly.

John pulled the spot back toward him, with a little more confidence. This time the taxi rose, with fair acceleration. He saw that the inner spheres remained in place, and now a dark-red spot showed on top of the translucent red sphere, uncovered by the gray one.

"Vertical control," Pei said. He sounded calm.

"And
hurry!"
Betsy said, not calmly at all. "Another thirty seconds, and they've got us!"

John let the spot center, then nudged it to the left, rolling the ball sideways in place. This time the taxi moved left, speeding up as he turned farther. Now yellow showed at the top, from the next shell down; the red had stayed under the moving gray.

"Horizontal," Pei said.

John held the spot over and pulled it toward him. As he did so, the red one came into view, and the taxi rose at an angle.

"Vectors!" John cried. "The spots show each force acting on the vehicle! We're moving left and up, so the resultant is a slant. Terrific!"

"Now rotate," Pei suggested.

"Ten seconds," Betsy cried, watching the pursuit. "Nine, eight, seven...."

John let the ball go, then spun it clockwise. The taxi shot backward, sending them all tumbling again, but this time John hung on. He saw the pursuing sphere pass them thirty feet below, surprised by this late maneuver.

"All right, crew! I've got the system now! Latch on to the furniture, 'cause we're going to dive!" He turned the ball forward until it was upside down.

They were weightless as the taxi dropped. Then he spun the ball counterclockwise, and the sphere raced forward at the lower level.

"They're on manual, too," Betsy cried, still watching. "They're looping around to come at us again."

"With a second craft," Pei said.

John held the ball spun half around to maintain speed, noting that a green spot showed on its side. Green was forward velocity! He pulled back to show the red dot, lifting the vehicle, then turned right to expose the yellow. Now he was going forward and up and left, all at a good clip.

"They are enclosing us," Pei said.

John saw. Two more spheres had arrived, and probably more were on the way. Each craft was now about a hundred yards distant from the taxi.

"I can sling this ball about a bit," John said. "It would be rough on us, but I might shake one or two of the others. But a swarm—"

"That does affect the probabilities," Pei admitted.

"Want me to drop down and hide in the bush?"

"They'd run us down before we got far," Betsy said. "Look!"

A fifth globe was hovering directly above them, matching ascent and velocity.

"And there," Meilan said.

The sixth globe was below.

"We aren't going anywhere," John said. "That's englobement."

As they watched, bands of light began to develop: four glowing streaks, emerging from each craft and touching the adjacent ones. The beams linked them all in a double pyramid, with the taxi centered where the bases met. Eight glowing triangles fenced in the fugitives.

"What are they doing?" Betsy asked, worried but intrigued.

"Building a birdcage," Pei said. "I suspect the walls are more substantial than they appear."

"A cage of light!" John mused. He was too fascinated to be frightened. "Well, let's give it a try!"

He accelerated the taxi toward the open center of one of the huge triangles of force. Light sparkled as they touched the geometric plane. The taxi shuddered and slowed, bathed in the glow. Its power remained on, but a greater power brought it to a stop.

"The beams are only where it shows—in a direct line between ships," Betsy said. "At the corners, or whatever."

John reversed and brought the taxi back to the center of the cage. "The net must be everywhere, though. We're trapped, all right. Not even any chance for heroics."

"If I may suggest," Meilan said. "There is a game played by the boys of my province—"

"A game!" Betsy cried disdainfully. "We need a cannon!"

But John remembered Meilan's cleverness in converting from one costume to another. She was a sharp girl, and her notion could be worthwhile. "What game?"

"They would mount and ride toward each other, guiding their horses aside at the very last instant. The first to swerve was—"

"Chicken!" John cried. "I've heard of that with cars!"

"I do not know of cars, but a chicken is a bird," Pei said. "And we are now a caged bird, but—"

"Not that kind," John said excitedly. "What they did was pack two cars—horses, in your case—full of kids and charge 'em down the highway at each other head-on. Sometimes neither one would swerve, and then it made headlines; but usually...."

Pei looked at the spheres surrounding them. "A test of courage. I begin to understand, foolish as it seems to me."

"It's a game we can play, all right!" John said. "You explained why before—and this time it
isn't
foolish. Close your eyes, folks!"

He oriented the taxi and zoomed it forward, directly toward one of the englobing craft.

"Hey! You'll crash!" Betsy screamed.

"That's the idea," John said, but he was beginning to sweat. He continued to move at increasing speed, centering directly on the selected target. "Coming at you, Standards!"

The other globe swelled alarmingly as they rushed toward it. Then Betsy cried out incoherently and ran at John, but Pei intercepted her and held her back. Meilan still did not move or speak. They closed to fifty feet, traveling at what John judged to be almost a hundred miles per hour. Betsy began to scream, piercingly, as they smashed into the—She finished her scream on a note of surprise. They had passed through without colliding.

Pei smiled grimly. "They were, as you say, chicken."

The other sphere had dodged out of the way in that last fraction of a second. The network of force had been disrupted at that point, and the taxi had broken out of the cage. The bird would not be trapped like that again!

"Now will you let me go?" Betsy asked Pei.

"If I must," he said, smiling.

"Know any more games like that?" John asked Meilan. She only smiled.

The six spheres had been foiled, but they had not given up. They were now following about a mile behind, keeping pace but not gaining. John was not pushing the taxi to its limit, so he was sure the pursuit was deliberately holding back.

"They do not wish to play again," Pei said. "But we cannot proceed to that other enclave so long as they are watching us."

"We have to lose them somehow," Betsy agreed.

"I have heard that ships can lose each other in fog," Pei said. "Especially in a storm."

John followed his gaze. "That's just a cloud formation. Hardly a storm."

"Storm!" Betsy said, turning to this new topic with enthusiasm. "Let me turn on the weather report."

In a moment she had the taxi's communications screen on. She experimented with its controls, searching for weather.

John felt something at his hand. It was Canute's nose. "Yeah, we've been ignoring you," he said, patting the long head. "Dog or gomdog, you're still my pal. I'm sure glad you weren't lost in China!"

"Here we are!" Betsy cried happily. "A continuous weather report. And look—they have a large storm scheduled! If we can locate it...."

"Worth a try," John agreed, though he had strong private doubts. A civilization with technology this advanced should have no trouble tracing a taxi in a storm.

"And I can read the coordinates!" Betsy said, elated. "Except they have only five digits apiece. Must be a different grid."

"Ask information," John said. "We don't have to figure out coordinates when we have that."

"Take us into the nearest rainstorm," Betsy told the communicator.

The taxi shifted back to automatic and changed course. The six following globes matched the change but did not close in again.

Pei's gaze was fixed on the communicator. "That spirit in the machine," he murmured to John. "It can understand what we say?"

"Yes. I think it's like a computer, with a big bank of information. It can answer questions and—"

"It was constructed and given life by the Standards?"

"Of course."

"Should it not serve its masters, then?"

"You don't understand. It's a
machine.
It—" Then John caught Pei's meaning.
The Standards could be listening in on everything.

"Betsy," John called. "Turn it off." He gestured toward the communicator.

"Turn it off? We
need
that." Then she, too, caught on. "Ouch! We're prime fools, all of us!" She fiddled with the knobs. "I hope that does it. Can't be certain, so—"

"So keep it low and simple," John said. "I think we need a change in plans."

"We could land in the storm and all jump ship," Betsy whispered. "And send it on to somewhere else. They might follow it."

"We need the vehicle," John pointed out. "We don't have a chance of finding Songhai or whatever without it."

"We can't keep it," Betsy said. "By this time they must have traced that ID, and they'll know every time you use it, maybe. We
have
to take our chances on the ground."

"Maybe that's what
they
think. We might drop ourselves right into a trap on the ground. At least they can't catch us here."

"Perhaps we could do both," Pei said. "We could drop somebody to check the enclave while the others went on. Then we could rendezvous at a set time and place and see which course looked better."

"Yes!" John agreed. "In fact, we could set down at a dozen places, and they might not know where we got off, or if we did at all. We can fool them yet!"

"But who checks the enclave?" Betsy asked.
"I'd
much rather stay with the taxi."

There was a pause. Evidently they all felt the same way.

"I have Canute," John said finally. "He would be a big help on a ground mission, so I suppose I should do it."

Nobody argued with him.

"Well, let's firm up the plan," Betsy said, visibly relieved. "We drop you, loop around, come back—but if we do it too soon, you won't have a chance to fetch them, and if we come too late...."

"Same problem we had before," John said. "I'm not anxious to time it that finely again, though I guess it wasn't as close as I thought, since Pei was there all the time."

"There are two coordinates left," Meilan said. "Humé told me about the numbers yesterday. We should check them both."