Chapter 4

Calhoun was in very bad shape when the sports car came to the end of the highway.

First, all the multiple roadways of the route that had brought him here were joined by triple ribbons of road-surface from the north. For a space there were twenty-four lanes available to traffic. They flowed together, and then there were twelve. Here there was evidence of an enormous traffic concentration at some time now past. Brush and small trees were crushed and broken where cars had been forced to travel off the hard-surface roadways and through undergrowth. The twelve lanes dwindled to six, and the unpaved area on either side showed that innumerable cars had been forced to travel off the highway altogether. Then there were three lanes, and then two, and finally only a single ribbon of pavement where no more than two cars could run side by side. The devastation on either hand was astounding. All visible vegetation for half a mile to right and left was crushed and tangled. And then the narrow surfaced road ceased to be completely straight. It curved around a hillock--and here the ground was no longer perfectly flat--and came to an end.

And Calhoun saw all the ground-cars of the planet gathered and parked together.

There were no buildings. There were no streets. There was nothing of civilization but tens and scores of thousands of ground-cars. They were extraordinary to look at, stopped at random, their fronts pointed in all directions, their air-column tubes thrusting into the ground so that there might be trouble getting them clear again.

Parked bumper to bumper in closely placed lines, in theory twenty-five thousand cars could be parked on a square mile of ground. But there were very many times that number of cars here, and some places were unsuitable for parking, and there were lanes placed at random and there’d been no special effort to put the maximum number of cars in the smallest place. So the surface transportation system of the planet Maya spread out over some fifty sprawling square miles. Here, cars were crowded closely. There, there was much room between them. But it seemed that as far as one could see in the twilight there were glistening vehicles gathered confusedly, so there was nothing else to be seen but an occasional large tree rising from among them.

Calhoun came to the end of the surfaced road. He’d waited for the pellets he’d taken and given to Allison to have the effect they’d had on Murgatroyd. That had come about. He’d driven on. But the strength of the inductor field had increased to the intolerable. When he stopped the sports car he showed the effects of what he’d been through.

Figures on foot converged upon him instantly. There were eager calls.

“It’s stopped? You got through? We can go back?”

Calhoun shook his head. It was just past sunset and many brilliant colorings showed in the western sky, but they couldn’t put color into Calhoun’s face. His cheeks were grayish and his eyes were deep-sunk, and he looked like someone in the last stages of exhaustion. He said heavily:

“It’s still there. We came through. I’m Med Service. Have you got a government here? I need to talk to somebody who can give orders.”

If he’d asked two days earlier there would have been no answer, because the fugitives were only waiting for a disaster to come to an end. One day earlier, he might have found men with authority busily trying to arrange for drinking water for something like two millions of people, in the entire absence of wells or pumps or ways of making either. And if he’d been a day later, it is rather likely that he’d have found savage disorder. But he arrived at sundown three days after the flight from the cities. There was no food to speak of, and water was drastically short, and the fugitives were only beginning to suspect that they would never be able to leave this place--and that they might die here.

Men left the growing crowd about the sports car to find individuals who could give orders. Calhoun stayed in the car, resting from the unbearable strain he’d undergone. The ground-inductor cattle fence had been ten miles deep. One mile was not bad. Only Murgatroyd had noticed it. After two miles Calhoun and Allison suffered; but the medication strengthened them to take it. But there’d been a long, long way in the center of the induction-field in which existence was pure torment. Calhoun’s muscles defied him for part of every two-second cycle, and his heart and lungs seemed constantly about to give up even the pretense of working. In that part of the cattle-fence field, he’d hardly dared drive faster than a crawl, in order to keep control of the car when his own body was uncontrollable. But presently the field strength lessened and ultimately ended.

Now Murgatroyd looked cordially at the figures who clustered about the car. He’d hardly suffered at all. He’d had half as much of the medication as Calhoun himself, and his body weight was only a tenth of Calhoun’s. He’d made out all right. Now he looked expectantly at what became a jammed mass of crowding men about the vehicle that had come through the invisible barrier across the highway. They hoped desperately for news to produce hope. But Murgatroyd waited zestfully for somebody to welcome him and offer him cakes and sweets, and undoubtedly presently a cup of coffee.

But nobody did.

It was a long time before there was a stirring at the edge of the crowd. Night had fully fallen then, and for miles and miles in all directions lights in the ground cars of Maya’s inhabitants glowed brightly. They drew upon broadcast power, naturally, for their motors and their lights. Off to one side someone shouted. Calhoun turned on his headlights for a guide. More shoutings. A knot of men struggled to get through the crowd. With difficulty, presently, they reached the car.

“They say you got through,” panted a tall man, “but you can’t get back. They say--”

Calhoun roused himself. Allison, beside him, stirred. The tall man panted again:

“I’m the planetary president. What can we do?”

“First, listen,” said Calhoun tiredly.

He’d had a little rest. Not much, but some. The actual work he’d done in driving three hundred-odd miles from Maya City was trivial. But the continuous, and lately violent, spasms of his heart and breathing muscles had been exhausting. He heard Murgatroyd say ingratiatingly, “Chee-chee-chee-chee,” and put his hand on the little animal to quiet him.

“The thing you ran away from,” said Calhoun with effort, “is a type of ground-induction field using broadcast power from the grid. It’s used on Texia to confine cattle to their pastures and to move them where they’re wanted to be. But it was designed for cattle. It’s a cattle fence. It could kill humans.”

He went on, his voice gaining strength and steadiness as he spoke. He explained, precisely, how a ground-induction field was projected in a line at a right angle to its source. It could be moved by adjustments of the apparatus by which it was projected.

“But--but if it uses broadcast power,” the planetary president said urgently, “then if the power broadcast is cut off it has to stop! If you got through it coming here, tell us how to get through going back and we’ll cut off the power broadcast ourselves! We’ve got to do something immediately. The whole planet’s here. There’s no food! There’s no water! Something has to be done before we begin to die!”

“But,” said Calhoun, “if you cut off the power you’ll die anyway! You’ve got a couple of million people here, and you’re a hundred miles from food. Without power you couldn’t get to food or bring it here. Cut the power and you’re still stranded here. Without power you’ll die as soon as with it.”

There was a sound from the listening men around. It was partly a growl and partly a groan.

“I’ve just found this out,” said Calhoun. “I didn’t know until the last ten miles exactly what the situation was, and I had to come here to be sure. Now I need some people to help me. It won’t be pleasant. I may have enough medication to get a dozen people back through. It’ll be safer if I take only six. Get a doctor to pick me six men. Good heart action. Sound lungs. Two should be electronics engineers. The others should be good shots. If you get them ready, I’ll give them the same stuff that got us through. It’s desensitizing medication, but it will do only so much. And try and find some weapons for them.”