Chapter IV

Collins turned onto the old McHenty blacktop, his foot pressed to the floorboards. Ed Michaels didn’t own a car; he would have to borrow one from somebody. That would take time. Maybe Candle would give him his hearse to use to follow the Black Rachel.

Trees, fences, barns whizzed past the windows of the cab and then the steel link-mesh fence took up, the fence surrounding the New Kansas National Spaceport. Behind it, further from town, some of the concrete had been poured and the horizon was a remote, sterile gray sweep.

The McHenty Road would soon be closed to civilian traffic. But right now the government wanted people to drive along and see that the spaceship was nothing terrible, nothing to fear.

The girl, Nancy Comstock, was alive in the back. He knew that. But he couldn’t stop to prove it or to help her. Candle would make them lynch him first.

Why hadn’t Candle stopped him from getting away?

He had managed to break his control for a second. He had done that before when he deflected Nancy’s aim. But he couldn’t resist Candle for long. Why hadn’t Candle made him turn around and come back?

Candle’s control of him had seemed to stop when he got inside the cab of the truck. Could it be that the metal shield of the cab could protect an Earthling from the strange mental powers of the creature from another planet which was inhabiting the body of Doc Candle?

Collins shook his head.

More likely Candle was doing this just to get his hopes up. He probably would seize control of him any time he wanted to. But Collins decided to go on playing it as if he did have some hope, as if a shield of metal could protect him from Candle’s control. Otherwise ... there was no otherwise.

Collins suddenly saw an opening.

The steel mesh fence was ruptured by a huge semitrailer truck turned on its side. Twenty feet of fence on either side was down. This was restricted government property, but of course spaceships were hardly prime military secrets any longer. Repairs in the fence had not been made instantaneously, and the wreckage was not guarded.

Collins swerved the wheel and drove the old wagon across the waffle-plate obstruction, onto the smooth tarmac beyond.

He raced, raced, raced through the falling night, not sure where he was headed.

Up above he saw the shelter of shadows from a cluster of half-finished buildings. He drove into them and parked.

Collins sat still for a moment, then threw open the door and ran around to the back of the truck, jerking open the handles.

Nancy fell out into his arms.

“What kind of ambulance is this?” she demanded. “It doesn’t look like an ambulance. It doesn’t smell like an ambulance. It looks like--looks like--”

Collins said, “Shut up. Get out of there. We’ve got to hide.”

“Why?”

“They think I murdered you.”

“Murdered me? But I’m alive. Can’t they see I’m alive?”

Collins shook his head. “I doubt it. I don’t know why, but I don’t think it would be that simple. Come with me.”

The blood on her breast had dried, and he could see it was only a shallow groove dug by the bullet. But she flinched in pain as she began to walk, pulling the muscles.

They stopped and leaned against a half-finished metallic shed.

“Where are we? Where are you taking me?”

“This is the spaceport. Now shut up.”

“Let me go.”

“No.”

“I’m not dead,” Nancy insisted. “You know I’m not dead. I won’t press charges against you--just let me go free.”

“I told you it wasn’t that simple. He wants them to think you’re dead, and that’s what they’ll think.”

Nancy passed fingers across her eyes. “Who? Who are you talking about?”

“Doc Candle. He won’t let them know you’re alive.”

Nancy rubbed her forehead with both hands. “Sam, you don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t--know what you’re getting yourself into. Just let me show myself to someone. They’ll know I’m not dead. Really they will.”

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s find somebody.”

He led her toward a more nearly completed building, showing rectangles of light. They looked through the windows to see several men in uniforms bending over blueprints on a desk jury-rigged of sawhorses and planks.

“Sam,” Nancy said, “one of those men is Terry Elston. He’s a Waraxe boy. I went to school with him. He’ll know me. Let’s go in...”

“No,” Collins said. “We don’t go in.”

“But--” Nancy started to protest, but stopped. “Wait. He’s coming out.”

Collins slid along the wall and stood behind the door. “Tell him who you are when he comes out. I’ll stay here.”

They waited. After a few seconds, the door opened.

Nancy stepped into the rectangle of light thrown on the concrete from the window.

“Terry,” she said. “Terry, it’s me--Nancy Comstock.”

The blue-jawed young man in uniform frowned. “Who did you say you were? Have you got clearance from this area?”

“It’s me, Terry. Nancy. Nancy Comstock.”

Terry Elston stepped front and center. “That’s not a very good joke. I knew Nancy. Hell of a way to die, killed by some maniac.”

“Terry, I’m Nancy. Don’t you recognize me?”

Elston squinted. “You look familiar. You look a little like Nancy. But you can’t be her, because she’s dead.”

“I’m here, and I tell you I’m not dead.”

“Nancy’s dead,” Elston repeated mechanically. “Say, what are you trying to pull?”

“Terry, behind you. A maniac!”

“Sure,” Elston said. “Sure. There’s a maniac behind me.”

Collins stepped forward and hit Elston behind the ear. He fell silently.

Nancy stared down at him.

“He refused to recognize me. He acted like I was crazy, pretending to be Nancy Comstock.”

“Come on along,” Collins urged. “They’ll probably shoot us on sight as trespassers.”

She looked around herself without comprehension.

“Which way?”

“This way.“

Collins did not say those words.

They were said by the man with the gun in the uniform like the one worn by Elston. He motioned impatiently.

“This way, this way.”

“No priority,” Colonel Smith-Boerke said as he paced back and forth, gun in hand.

From time to time he waved it threateningly at Collins and Nancy who sat on the couch in Smith-Boerke’s office. They had been sitting for close to two hours. Collins now knew the Colonel did not intend to turn him over to the authorities. They were being held for reasons of Smith-Boerke’s own.

“They sneak the ship in here, plan for an unscheduled hop from an uncompleted base--the strictest security we’ve used in ten or fifteen years--and now they cancel it. This is bound to get leaked by somebody! They’ll call it off. It’ll never fly now.”