“Where will it take us?”
“Away from here. That’s all we need right now.”
“No sign of the light,” Diana said, peering up into the star-flooded sky.
“Won’t last. If they find us out here like this, they’ve got us.” He took Geri’s arm and led them both back under the trestle. “This kinda crap happen at home?”
“Yes, actually, it does.”
“You mentioned rebels. Who’s winning?”
She shook her head. Her lips had formed a tight, bitter line.
“So they are. Why would that be?”
She stayed quiet, so Flynn took to listening for the next train.
“We created them!” She burst into tears.
Clumsily, he tried to comfort her. He looked to Diana for help.
“Not in my job description.”
In the distance, he heard a low, familiar sound, the horn of a train sounding as it approached a grade crossing. It was moving westward, which was good on two counts. It would be running heavy and therefore slow, and it would take them where they needed to go.
“Okay, kid, button it up. We’ve got some traveling to do.”
Geri shook her head. “We can’t escape. There’s no way.”
“There’s always a way.” He took her wrist, and she came along like an uneasy mare, ready to bolt at any moment. Diana followed them up onto the track.
Geri dumped her cookies between the rails. Crouching, she wept and coughed.
The train’s swinging headlamp appeared far along the roadway.
“Okay, what’s gonna happen is, there’ll be an empty boxcar along somewhere. We spot one, we start running. I’ll pull myself up, then get you guys, one after the other. It doesn’t feel like it, but we’re on a long upward grade, and she’s gonna be doing less than five miles an hour when she passes here. That’s fast, but if we sprint, we have a chance.”
At that moment, he saw light from above hit the field about half a mile away. Geri swallowed a scream. Even Diana, who was normally cool under pressure, grabbed his shoulder. She said, “Flynn, do you have any of that cyanide?”
“No time.”
“Please!”
The train was closing. So the engineer wouldn’t see them, he got them crouching down on the berm. If they were spotted, the guy would radio the bulls working the consist, and that would be another complication.
The light danced through the field, working its way closer to their position.
“They’re following our ruts, Flynn,” Diana moaned.
“Yep.”
The first engine roared past. There were four diesels back to back, and the train was moving at the equivalent of a flat-out sprint. He trotted along beside it, letting the cars slide on ahead, one by one.
“Stay with me!” he shouted.
A boxcar passed with its door rattling but closed. He leaped and grabbed the frame of the door, dragging it open and levering himself inside.
The light flashed down twenty feet away, then went out again.
He grabbed Geri’s arm and pulled her up. Diana was running hard, both of her arms stretched out, her hands clutching air. He leaned farther out. Reached. Touched her fingers, lost them.
The light flashed down again, this time a short distance ahead of them. The next time it came, it was going to hit this car. What that would mean, he had no idea.
He got her. Fingers intertwined, he pulled her toward him, causing her feet to bounce on the roadbed. If she slipped now, she’d be lucky to lose her legs and not her life. She cried out, her eyes begging, her teeth bared with effort and terror.
She came rolling in and lay on the floor gasping. Geri had crouched against the far wall.
“You considered this fun?” Diana gasped.
“It takes a little practice.”
The car shuddered. Light poured in the door, sucking columns of dust up off the floor. Flynn and Diana joined Geri against the far wall.
The car swayed furiously, the wheels screaming on the rails. Then it was plunged into darkness. Soon the light appeared again, but this time farther behind them.
As the train rounded a long curve, Flynn could see the light far behind them, dragging at the truck, which remained stuck under the trestle. He could see it rise, slam against the ties until it made them hop, but it could not be pulled out.
Finally, the light went away, flashing downward occasionally, then flickering off into the night.
CHAPTER NINE
THE TRAIN shuddered and clanged, picking up speed as it rolled into the long downgrade past the little community of Hale. Flynn knew the place well. If you wanted to jump a westbound train, you had to do it east of here and vice versa.
“I can’t believe we got away,” Geri said. “I thought I’d be killed right away, like my uncle.”
“Oltisis was your uncle?” Diana asked.
“We’re a police family.” She shook her head. “We actually got away.”
“We didn’t,” Flynn said. “They know exactly where we are.”
Both women looked to him.
He explained further. “The light hit this car and only this car. Therefore, they know we’re in here. Geri, tell me this—could that light pick up something as heavy as a boxcar?”
“Not on a small ship like that.”
“This train is going to stop in about fifteen minutes in the switching station at Hermes,” Flynn said. “When it does, they’re expecting that we’ll get off. The instant all three of us are on the ground, they’ll strike.”
“If we don’t get off?”
“They’ll follow the train until we do. We’re going to need to jump while it’s still moving. We absolutely cannot get off when it’s stopped.”
“Won’t they be watching for us to come off outside the station?” Geri asked.
“I hope not.”
“I don’t think I can jump off a moving train,” Diana said.
Flynn went to the middle of the car. “What you need to do is to control the way you take the hit. You do that with your shoulder and thigh, and as soon as you hit the ground, you start rolling. From twenty miles an hour, you’re going to break some bones. From ten, you’re going to be bruised. Less, and you walk away with a little dust in your mouth. Or, truthfully, a lot.”
“At what speed will we jump?”
“The faster, the better.” He glanced out the door. “Come on. There’s no time like the present.”
The prairie was silent, the sky awash in stars. Even so, he couldn’t imagine that they wouldn’t be spotted immediately, but he also didn’t see an alternative. He checked his guns. He’d caused the disk some damage before, so maybe he’d get lucky again.
“Okay, ladies, this is going to be extremely unpleasant. We’re doing about fourteen miles an hour. The lights of the switching station are going to appear when we round the next curve, so now’s the time.” He put his hands on Diana’s shoulders. “Relax, remember to roll.”
She shrank back.
He shoved and she went tumbling away down the berm, disappearing in a cloud of dust.
Geri had her eyes shut tight. He pushed her out, then went himself.
It was an easy roll into a berm that consisted of small gravel. Dusting himself, he got up to see if either of the women had broken bones.
Diana was sitting up about two feet from the passing train. She had her head in her hands.
“You hurt?”
She shook her head.
He found Geri lying on her side. He leaned down. “Geri?”
An eye opened.
“Can you get up? Is anything broken?”
“What does it feel like? I’ve never broken one of these before.”
“Pain will radiate out from the site of the injury. There will be swelling.”
“No, nothing like that.”
The train passed, its red taillight disappearing into the blackness. Above it at an altitude of no more than fifty feet was an object, its smooth skin softly reflecting
the starlight. The object followed the train around the bend and into Hermes.
He got Geri to her feet. “How many ships do they have?”
“They’re not rich, or they wouldn’t be here. So probably one, maybe two.”
Diana was still in tears. He put his arm around her shoulder. He didn’t want to tell her that they had a twelve-mile walk through some of the most desolate country in the United States before they reached Mac’s place. He didn’t even want to confirm her suspicion of where they were going, out of fear she’d run off on her own.
“We’ve got a hike,” he said, “and we need to do as much of it as we can before sunrise.”
“What if they find us?” Geri said.
“Will they? You tell me.”
“I have no idea.”
They set off, with Flynn guiding them by the stars. No way was he going to allow any electronics to be turned on. In any case, this was his country. He didn’t expect to get lost. The tricky part would come later. You didn’t walk up on Mac Terrell’s outfit without taking extreme precautions. He could easily make a target a mile away, and he wasn’t going to like the look of three people approaching without any preliminary warning. Even if he let them come up, his dogs were going to be another problem. They were incredible animals. Off-the-charts smart. When they were working for Morris, they had nearly killed Flynn. Instead, a number of members of their pack had gone to dog heaven.
They’d remember him for sure, and they’d likely be eager to even the score.
How Mac had gotten them to go over to his operation was very simple. Money meant nothing to them, but they did like good food. Dog food was out, even things like slabs of raw steak were out. These dogs lived on the finest meats, superbly prepared. They were gourmets. Mac had seen their value and hired a cook, built a cookhouse, even brought in some real high-grade food animals to service them—the best beef, mutton, and poultry Texas could provide—not to mention game, with which they were abundantly supplied.
Morris had obviously designed and built them. They were full of human DNA and nearly as smart as a man. With their superb ears, eyes, and noses, they were far superior to any human tracker.
As they walked, Flynn kept close to the few draws he found, ready to roll into them if he noticed the least sign of movement in the sky. Probably, all that would be visible would be a blotting of stars. The bottom of the thing wouldn’t be reflecting any light.
“Geri, I want you to tell me if the ship has any other vulnerabilities. I stopped the light working for a few minutes. Could I do more?”
“These ships are meant for inter–solar system travel. In an atmosphere, they can do about forty thousand of your miles in an hour. In space, up to a million.”
“A million miles an hour?”
“In space. They work by generating their own gravity field. This is done with counterrotating magnets that turn really fast. That’s the vulnerability. Hit that, and the ship disintegrates.”
“How would I hit it?”
“It rotates around the lower part of the ship, but the fuselage protects it.”
“The fuselage is strong, I assume.”
“Very.”
“And there are no seams, no cracks?”
“There is a seam. It’s a millimeter wide. It’s there to allow the ship’s gravity field to establish itself in the right pattern.”
A millimeter was not good. Not good at all.
“I want us to stay as low as we can. Keep to the draws. I know it’s harder going, but those guys have got to be looking for us.”
“Maybe they’re still following the train,” Diana said.
“Geri, let me ask you another question. You know that mind-reading device last year, the one that didn’t work—are there better ones? Might they be able to pick up our thoughts and track us that way?”
“I can’t say for sure. I don’t know what they have.”
He thought on that. “What might they have?”
“Another MindRay would be the only thing.”
“Good, because they’re damn near worthless.” They weren’t designed to actually read thought, but only to detect and evaluate it, and offer a reading as to the target’s state of awareness.
“Again, it’s the planet’s magnetic field. They need to be purpose-built to work on Earth, apparently.”
“And none have or will be.”
“No.”
“Answer me this: Is it possible that the crooks have weapons built into their bodies? Because they can paralyze you or render you unconscious by just touching you. They can hypnotize at a distance.”
“There are lots of models of biorobot. That sounds like a crowd-control unit.”
“Models? Units?”
“As I said, we created them. They became self-aware and turned on us.”
“I’ll say they did.”
“They’re in rebellion at home, but the ones here are run by somebody. They’re not part of the rebellion. They probably don’t even know about it.”
“And they’re the only form? Spindly legs and arms, deep-set eyes, and narrow faces? Those claws.”
“Yes.”
“What about other forms?”
“Some of them have the ability to use a tone that hypnotizes people. They’re used in the entertainment industry, to create special effects.”
“Like bears that aren’t really there?”
“I suppose.”
Geri was worthless as a cop, but she was a fountain of information. He’d learned more about Aeon and its weapons and its troubles in the past hour than anybody on Earth had learned since the first aliens had showed up. At least, as far as he’d been told. With the government so secrecy-obsessed, maybe there was more knowledge in other areas.
“Diana, do we have any liaison with the air force?” He’d read things like the testimony of Dr. Milton Torres, who was ordered to shoot at a UFO over England in 1957, and he knew that in 2008, fighters had been scrambled from the Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth to confront UFOs that appeared over Stephenville, Texas. In addition, he’d gone through dozens of public reports of helicopters following the things. But whenever they queried the Secretary of the Air Force, they’d been informed with absolute sincerity that “The air force takes no interest in unidentified flying objects,” and this despite the clearances of all involved.
The result? The three of them were being menaced by something in the air, and there was nobody to call, and nothing to do but fire a gun at it and hope for a lucky shot. MacAdoo Terrell, however, might be a real help in that department, given that all his shots were lucky.
The eastern sky began to glow, but at the same time, they had entered the low, nameless bands of hills that rose north of Mac’s place. They were probably on his ranch by now, in fact, and so had just another few hours to go before they reached the house.
Nobody complained—he had to give them that. Geri shambled along. Diana tried to maintain her dignity, but the way she pranced was a familiar giveaway. She was dealing with blisters. Flynn noted this carefully. If they had to run, she would be slowest.
“I don’t want anybody getting snakebit,” he said. “They come out with the sun, and they come out hungry. Geri, I assume you know what a snake is.”
“I did the Earth course and trained on-planet last month—so, yes, as I recall, a snake is a sort of self-propelled muscle that uses its mouth both for swallowing prey and defending itself. Some are venomed, and some are not. We have nothing like that on Aeon.”
“The diamondback rattlesnake is the main threat in this part of Texas. There are a lot of them, and we’ll see some. What’s critical if you hear the rattle is to stand absolutely still until you’ve identified the location of the snake. Then you can probably move off if you take it slow. If not, I’ll deal with it.” He would avoid killing a snake if he could. They were just trying to protect themselves. They didn’t deserve to die for that. When they were kids, he and Mac and Eddie had used them for target practice. People changed
.
The sun was well up in the eastern sky when Flynn spotted the first faint gleam off a tin roof far ahead.
“Okay, hold on. No closer.”
“What?” Diana asked.
“That’s Mac’s place out there. We want to be real careful from here on. If we’re close enough to see it, we’re close enough for him to hit us.”
“He wouldn’t fire on you.”
“He might shoot first and ask questions later. It happens. Plus, he’s got Morris’s dogs.”
“That can’t be true.”
“It’s true.”
“How in the world did that happen?”
“With Mac, you never know. But he sold his old pack to the DEA, the way I heard it. Now he has the finest pack of dogs in the world.”
“What sets them apart?” Geri asked.
“They’ve got human genes. They’re highly intelligent.”
“That kind of hybridization is illegal.”
“Not here. We don’t know how to do it, so we don’t have a law against it.”
“Well, you should.”
“Geri, what kind of person is Morris? He’s not just here for fun. He kidnapped and he kills. Now he’s on a revenge kick.”
“We have psychopaths, too, unfortunately. He came here to steal genetic and sexual material because he was looking to make money. Then, I guess when you thwarted him, his ego took over.”
“Sounds pretty familiar.”
“Have you seen Mac recently?” Diana asked.
“I came out for a visit a couple of months ago, so yeah.”
About half an hour later, Flynn saw another flash of light, this one on the windshield of a pickup. It was sending up a dust cloud and coming toward them.
“Thank God,” Diana said, “I’m just about done in.”
“Get out of sight,” Flynn said.
“Excuse me, the arms are turning pink on this. Is that a problem?”
“It’s called sunburn, Geri.”
“How strange.”
“Yeah, it’s strange, all right. Come on, you two, we need to—”
“I know what sunburn is, but normally you’re better adapted to your own star. Are you sure the human species originated on Earth?”
Shaking his head, more to ward off the bizarre question than to answer it, he drew her down into a slight depression in the ground, which was the only concealment for a good mile.
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