by Isaac Asimov
“Mm, no, I don’t.” He shook his head tightly. “I really don’t.”
Ishihara described MC 4.
“Yes, I remember seeing him. He just joined us a few days ago. A real little guy.” The man nodded vigorously.
“Have some people bring this man to me immediately. Do not let him escape.”
“Yes, comrade.” The man hurried back down toward the ditch.
Wayne, next to Ishihara, let out a long breath. “Is he going to help?”
“Yes,” said Ishihara. Then his internal receiver picked up another alert on the NKVD radio band. They had been spotted standing outside the car by a pair of agents who did not recognize them. Those agents were on their way for a closer look.
“We must go,” said Ishihara, turning and looking into the distance. In the middle of the line of trucks, he saw another NKVD car. It was trying to get around the trucks in front of it, but the slope was too rough in that spot for it to pass them. “Get in the car and start it. Wait for me. Now.”
Wayne hurried back to the car.
Ishihara ran down the slope after the man he had just sent to find MC 4. “Comrade, wait.”
“Huh? What is it?”
“An emergency has arisen. Tell no one about this man called MC 4. I repeat — no one.”
“All right.”
“Where does this work brigade spend the night?” Ishihara asked quickly.
The man gave him an address.
Ishihara ran back up to the driver’s side of the car. Taking the hint, Wayne slid quickly over to the passenger side. The driver of the other NKVD car honked his horn and waved for the trucks to move out of his way. When the truck drivers could, they slowly worked their way to the side on the uneven terrain.
“It may be a rough ride,” said Ishihara. “Hang on. I will search for a place where we can turn back toward Moscow.” He took the car forward with a jerk. Some distance behind them, the other NKVD car still honked angrily at the trucks in its way.
“What if they have us surrounded?” Wayne asked frantically. “How do we know which way to go?”
“Only one car has reported sighting us so far,” said Ishihara. “I do not believe they saw the license plate on this car. They saw us standing outside the car and must have had our personal descriptions.”
Wayne nodded.
Ishihara gripped the wheel hard and drove forward, glancing in the mirror. The NKVD car had finally passed the trucks and was speeding toward them.
18
STEVE SHOVELED IN silence for the rest of the afternoon. He finally decided to call Hunter again on the ride home, after they had entered Moscow again. Even when the call was intercepted, as he was certain it would be, the movement of the truck through city streets would make locating the transmitter impossible. The NKVD would not be able to focus on a single truck and then hassle the people in his work brigade again. He would just have to be careful about exactly what he said.
The trucks came to pick them up when the sun was low in the west. All the workers began climbing wearily out of the ditches and plodding toward the trucks. Steve glanced around for Jane, then saw Judy quickly working her way toward the neighboring work brigade.
“Come on.” Steve grabbed Jane’s arm and pulled her after him. He tried to follow Judy, but she had a substantial head start. In the crowd of people moving toward the trucks, the only way he could catch her was to run and dart through the crowd, drawing everyone’s attention.
“What’s she doing?” Jane asked quietly, hurrying along next to him. “Did she tell you?”
“No, but I’m sure she wants to ride back with the other brigade.”
“We’ll never catch her. She’s already climbing into one of the trucks.” Jane stopped.
“I didn’t think they’d let her on the wrong truck,” said Steve, reluctantly pulling up, also. “She said everything was so well organized.”
“I guess she got herself lost in the crowd,” said Jane. “Everybody’s exhausted, including the guys who watch over the work brigades.”
“At least she looks the part enough to do that,” said Steve, with a tired grin. “I couldn’t.”
“We better get on our own truck,” said Jane. “Before it leaves without us.”
“Come on.” Steve glanced one more time at Judy, who smiled at them from the back of the truck she had mounted. He hoped she knew what she was doing. They could not call each other without risking being overheard by locals. At least for now, she was on her own.
Hunter spent the day quietly in the prisoner pen. Very few people spoke and he did not initiate conversation with anyone. They had been fed a tasteless gruel in the middle of the afternoon. Otherwise, the guards merely walked through the corridor on patrol once every hour.
As the hours passed, Hunter considered his situation. At first he expected that the NKVD would eventually take him out and question him further. The additional contact would have brought him new data and allowed him to make more judgments about how to free himself.
However, that had not happened. During the course of the day the NKVD had shown no interest in any of the prisoners. Now Hunter had to consider that perhaps the agents planned no further contact with any of them for a substantial period of time. Theoretically, they might all be shipped to another prison without any more interrogations.
The First Law pressed him internally to help these people. All of them were probably headed for either torture here or a slow death in the Siberian labor camps. Of course, his First Law imperative not to change history took precedence.
However, the internal stress was building. He remained in some danger of being neutralized by the conflict. Finally, of course, he was useless to his team while he simply sat in a cell. Late in the afternoon, he decided that he would have to take action to free himself.
The next time one of the guards came down the hall on his routine patrol, Hunter walked over to the bars. Every other prisoner in the pen was watching to see what he would do. No one spoke.
“I have changed my mind,” Hunter said loudly to the guard. “Tell the agents I have changed my mind.”
He could hear disapproving murmurs from the crowd behind him. The guard stopped, studying his face suspiciously. Then he came closer.
“You changed your mind?” The guard folded his arms. “About what?”
“I would like to speak to the agents who arrested me,” Hunter said calmly.
“Oh, would you?” The guard smiled grimly. “And why would they like to speak with you?”
“I did not answer their Questions previously. I am willing to do so now.” Hunter, of course, would have to improvise those answers. Right now, his focus was simply on getting out of this pen.
“Maybe you already had your chance.” The guard snickered. “Why don’t I just let you rot right here? Or maybe I’ll just let you freeze. Where you’re going, that will be easy.” He laughed harshly.
Hunter realized suddenly that the guard was angling for a bribe of some kind. Other prisoners might, from time to time, be able to arrange a bribe through family members or friends. Hunter did not have that choice.
“The agents will be very grateful when they hear what I have to say,” said Hunter. “They will appreciate the guard who brought me to them.”
“Yeah? How do I know that?”
“I have information about the Germans,” said Hunter. “If you do not report that I am willing to cooperate, then one of the guards on another shift will. He will get the credit. Those agents will not like hearing that you delayed my information from reaching them.”
The guard studied him without speaking.
Hunter forced himself to smile. “Maybe you will join me in here, comrade.”
“The Germans,” the guard said to himself, uncertainly. He looked at Hunter without speaking.
“Let him out,” called one of the other prisoners. He was followed by a few calls of agreement from others.
Most of the prisoners remained absolutely silent.
Ishihara drove as fast as he dared, using all of his faculties to escape the NKVD car behind them. As they rode roughly over the open, frozen ground, Ishihara scanned the terrain with magnified vision. He picked out the smoothest pieces of ground, utilizing his precise eye-hand coordination to steer so that the tires would get the best traction and the clearest path. Gradually, he began to circle back toward the road they had taken from Moscow.
As Ishihara drove, he watched the pursuit car in the rearview mirror as much as he could. He observed that the human driver behind them was not handling the steering over open ground nearly as well. The NKVD agent was not able to hit the Quick turns, twists, and shifts of gears that Ishihara could maintain. As a result, the pursuit car bumped and bounced much more severely. Ishihara slowly gained ground, leaving the other car behind.
Behind them, the sun was already down. Through the waning light, he could barely see the unpaved road which he and Wayne had taken to reach the ditches. Some of the trucks carrying workers back to Moscow were visible on it, the beams of their headlights marking its path. Ishihara headed for the road.
Wayne turned to look over his shoulder at the car following them. “Finally! We’re leaving them behind now, aren’t we? You see that?”
“Yes.” Suddenly Ishihara picked up another communication from the car behind them to their colleagues. “They have realized it, too.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Up to now, they had not called for help.”
“Really? Why not?” Wayne looked at him in surprise. “What’s going on now?”
“I believe they wanted to catch us and take all the credit for themselves. However, they just radioed our position and direction for the first time to the NKVD at large.”
“Oh, no!”
“Do not panic. The nearest NKVD cars which have responded are well behind us. They were spread out along the length of the ditches and have not returned to Moscow.”
“But Moscow must have plenty more agents! They’ll cut us off on our way back to the city.”
“They will try,” Ishihara said calmly. He knew that Wayne needed some reassurance. Since Ishihara did not have any good news for him, he tried to convey confidence through a calm and reassuring demeanor.
“But what are we going to do?” Wayne asked frantically. “I mean, at some point we’ll have to jump in time again. But I still hate to do that.”
“The trucks on the road haven’t answered by radio; I don’t think they have radios. I think we should be able to reach the edge of Moscow without being caught. At that point, we have a chance to get lost in the city.”
“But the whole NKVD will be coming for us now, won’t they?” Wayne looked behind him again.
“Yes, I expect so. Once we have eluded the immediate pursuit in Moscow, we shall have to plan on abandoning the car out of sight and escaping on foot.”
“Okay.” Wayne looked at him for a moment, a little calmer now. “Okay. Just tell me what to do.”
Ishihara decided not to tell Wayne at this time that he was not sure what to do. Leaving the car somewhere in Moscow was not enough. To escape the current pursuit effectively, without moving through time again, they required a crowd of people in which to lose themselves and shelter for the night.
By the time Ishihara reached the road, the NKVD car following them had fallen well behind. Its headlights bounced crazily in the darkness. Ahead of Ishihara and Wayne on the road, the trucks were roughly a half kilometer ahead.
Ishihara drove in silence, gradually catching up to the ponderous trucks. Since the car pursuing them would soon reach this road, too, and speed up, he passed the first truck. When he could, he passed the next one. Slowly and patiently, he moved to the front of the convoy and eventually faced an open road to Moscow.
In the distance behind them, he soon saw the headlights of the pursuit car swinging around the trucks, also. Soon they were in a simple race on the frozen, unpaved highway. Ishihara drove as fast as the car would safely go, still using the edge that his robotic skills and reflexes gave him. Slowly, they simply pulled away from the car behind them.
When Ishihara came to an intersecting road near the edge of Moscow, he slammed on the brakes and took the turn sharply. The tires squealed and Wayne hooked one arm over the back of his seat to steady himself.
“I apologize,” said Ishihara. “But from now on, we are in greater danger, as you mentioned earlier, of being surrounded by the NKVD.”
“We have to find a place to abandon the car,” said Wayne. “Right?”
“Perhaps not yet. I have the address of the work brigade in which MC 4 was working.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me!” Wayne laughed suddenly, a little anxiously.
“I was concerned about escaping the pursuit,” said Ishihara. “If we were caught, I did not want to harm you by adding additional disappointment.”
“That changes everything! Let’s just go get him — if more NKVD guys don’t find us first.”
“We are on our way now,” said Ishihara. “I am taking an evasive route. Now that we have the complex of city streets in which to lose ourselves, I believe we have a good chance of success.”
“What about their radio communication — are they going to surround us or something?”
“They are trying already,” Ishihara said calmly. “The pursuit car has continued to radio ahead for help. However, as long as they use the radio to communicate and report their positions, I shall know where each of their cars is moving.”
Wayne nodded. “Okay. Good.”
Ishihara chose not to worry him further by telling him just how close the pursuit had become.
19
HUNTER REMAINED STANDING by the bars in the prison pen after the guard walked away. He kept his back to his fellow prisoners, hoping to avoid a confrontation. Many of them were muttering angrily among themselves about his willingness to cooperate.
A very few defended his choice to reveal information about the German enemy. He decided not to speak to any of them. As always, he feared that unnecessary interaction might lead to events that would be historically significant.
While Hunter waited for the guard to return and, he hoped, take him back upstairs, he also monitored the NKVD radio traffic. He heard the alerts go out to locate the stolen NKVD car. By now, the NKVD had confirmed to him that the stolen car was being driven by Wayne and Ishihara.
Hunter also noticed that an alert had gone out for someone of MC 4’s description. No word of his apprehension had been reported yet. Now Hunter was more eager than ever to escape from NKVD custody.
Finally the guard returned with a partner. Without a word, the guards unlocked the door and escorted Hunter back upstairs to the same interrogation room in which he had been held earlier. They seated him inside and looped handcuffs around a table leg before snapping them closed on his wrists. Then they left him alone again.
The room was reasonably warm, much more comfortable than the prison pen in the basement. The steam radiator was a luxury not wasted downstairs. Its occasional hissing was the only sound in the room.
Hunter felt more confident now, however. No matter what happened in this room, he could arrange his own escape without revealing any robotic abilities to the prisoners downstairs. Getting away was now just a matter of time.
More than two hours passed uneventfully. Hunter heard occasional footsteps and voices down the hall and elsewhere in the building, but he overheard nothing pertinent to him. As he continued to monitor the NKVD radio band, he followed the pursuit of the stolen car. He compared the information from the radio communication among agents and their dispatcher to the map of Moscow and outlying areas stored in his memory. As the pursuit continued, he followed the movements of the pursuit cars. He realized that Wayne and Ishihara were working their way back to t
he neighborhood where the public housing was concentrated.
Abruptly, he received a direct call on another radio band.
“Steve calling Hunter. Don’t respond! Just listen, okay?” Steve’s voice on the other band was muffled, and nearly drowned out by the sound of rushing air and a loud, rumbling engine. “I hope you’re there!”
Hunter understood that Steve was in a place where Hunter’s voice might be overheard if it came over Steve’s lapel pin. From the background sounds, he surmised that the team was riding one of the big trucks on the way home with the work brigade. Instead of speaking, he transmitted a clear tapping sound in a repeating rhythm: one, two … one-two-three … one, two … one-two-three …
“I read, Hunter! Jane and I are huddling down in one corner of a truck, pretending to talk to each other. Look — Judy took off in one of the other trucks. She’s chasing MC 4, but we’ve already lost sight of her truck in the dark.”
Again, Hunter acknowledged his receipt of the message by transmitting the rhythmic tapping.
“If there’s any way you can meet us back at the warehouse tonight, we need you! And we’ve all seen MC 4, so we have a shot at getting him. I’m shutting off again. Steve out.”
Hunter felt a renewed urgency. His team was on the verge of finding MC 4, but Wayne and Ishihara were also drawing near. In their most recent mission, back to Germany in Roman times, they had taken the component robot into custody and back to their own time only moments before Wayne Nystrom would have caught him, instead.
The voices he could hear down the hall began diminishing. Most of the people left the building, while a few new ones entered. The night staff, much smaller than the day staff, had started its shift.
Shortly after that, Hunter heard two sets of deliberate footsteps enter the front door and come down the hall. The door to the room opened and Agents Raskov and Konev entered. Both their faces were red from the cold; they still wore their overcoats and fur hats.
“This had better be very important,” said Agent Konev. “It had better be more important than what we were doing when we were ordered back here.”