“Pay up, now,” the attendant said. “I gotta car waitin’. It’s five sixty-seven altogether.”
Walt reached through the rolled down window and seized the man. He jerked him forward and down; and, with the same motion, slammed his own weight against the inside of the unlocked door. The steel top of the opening door cracked the attendant across the forehead; he went limp. Walt let go of him, closed the door, and drove off.
By the time he sighted her car ahead of him on the highway, in the mist and fog of dawn, nearly eleven hours had elapsed since he had begun the pursuit. It had been only a half an hour before that he had located the governor and teleported it out of the engine.
Chapter IX
Julia saw the bright lights behind her. They blinded her in the rear-view mirror until she knocked the mirror out of focus. She glanced at the speedometer. She was going as fast as the engine would permit.
She was weary from the beat of the motor and the ache of steady driving. Her body was drained of energy. The “Wide-awakes” seemed to be losing their effect. In spite of herself, she nodded. Too tired to think of anything else, she was thinking—almost dreaming, almost in half-slumber—of a steamy bath; of perfumed heat caressing her body; of soft, restful water lapping at her thighs.
Even the prospect of invasion had receded into some dim, dumb corner of her mind; it no longer concerned her. The demands of personal survival had pushed it aside; personal survival and the knowledge of her own incapacity to prevent, forestall, or counter it. And at last exhaustion had overcome even the demands of survival.
The brilliant lights behind began to pain upon her fatigue-soaked eyeballs. They shimmered in the windshield; they—
She realized they were gaining on her.
A car without a governor.
A crazy, reckless driver.
Walt!
Suddenly the fatigue vanished. Fear alerted her. She stiffened. Her heart pounded. She glanced behind her, squinting.
There was a sickening wrench at her body; she felt herself twisting, being sucked out of space.
Teleportation!
She grabbed the wheel. She was almost too weak to resist. She fought off the terrible, insistent fingers, she shrank away from them; she moaned.
Walt ceased the effort.
She was limp. She struggled to marshal her resources. Her will was not yet depleted so much that she could not fight back.
She concentrated on being where she was, in the car, on the highway. She felt a futile but exhilarating surge of victory.
Her hand trembled when she switched off the automatic-drive. The wheel under her hands began to vibrate. The car was sensitive to her control. It was alive and deadly and hurtling like a rocket.
I can’t outrun him now! she thought. He has too much speed!
. . . I’ve got to get off the highway. I’ve got to take a side road toward the mountain. There’ll be curves and twists and turns. They will cut his speed down. Maybe I can out drive him.
Side roads slipped by to her right and left.
She prepared to brake the car for the next cut-off slot.
It appeared far ahead; a dark slit on the left outlined by her rushing headlights.
She depressed the brake; the tires screamed.
The car skittered and fishtailed. She clung desperately to the wheel, battling the great chunk of metal with every ounce of her tiny body.
And somehow the car hurtled through the slot, across the other half of the highway, onto the hard topped, farm-to-market road that climbed toward the distant crest.
Walt’s car, braking shrilly, hurtled past her and was lost in the night.
Julia stamped the accelerator viciously. Her car plunged forward.
Lonely trees and brush stood like decaying phantoms in the splatter of her headlights. Far ahead, winking down the mountain, she saw the headlights of another car—crawling toward her slowly, like twin fire flies, indolent after a night of pleasure. The road was pitted, and the car beneath her jolted.
It was then in the loneliness of the seldom traveled farm road that she noticed the gasoline gauge.
The gas remaining in the tank could not be sufficient to take her another ten miles. The peg rested solidly on the empty mark to the left.
She began to cry.
*
The tears almost blinded her; she jerked the car back, just in time, from a ditch. She held it toward the fearful darkness ahead. Dawn that purpled the east seemed lost forever from this road and this life.
The road climbed slowly; then steeply.
Behind her now the bright lights like great flames crept closer, burning everything. The lights had pursued her for only half an hour; it seemed an eternity. The road began a great bend around the first sharp thrust of mountain. She slowed.
The headlights were gaining.
She wanted to give up.
The motor coughed.
Walt was almost upon her; elation throbbed in his being. He had been driving on manual; he dared not risk automatic-drive, not since his wreck. He was not quite as alert as he might have been. The strain was beginning to slow his reactions.
The curve was sharper; ahead, a hair-pin turn. Walt swung out to pass her and force her to stop or plunge over the side into the deepening valley. It was the maneuver he had seen the policemen perform.
The headlights of the early farmer with a heavy load of milk suddenly exploded at the curve.
Julia gasped and slammed on her brakes.
Walt jerked his eyes from Julia’s car an instant before the crash.
*
“Crazy God damned fool,” the farmer said as he crawled painfully from the wreckage of his pick-up truck. “Crazy God damned fool!” He clutched at his arm; it was broken and bleeding. “Passing on a curve! God damned fool, passing on a curve!”
Julia had stopped her car. She ran toward the two wrecks.
“Any kid knows better, any two year old kid,” the farmer said; he stared, unbelieving, at his arm. He sat down and was sick.
It was growing lighter. Mist lay over the valley. The air was damp with fading night.
Julia’s feet made harsh clicks on the road.
At Walt’s car she stopped. The farmer watched her with mute pain behind his eyes.
Reaction set in. She thought she was going to be sick, herself. She leaned against the wrecked car.
“We better get him out,” the farmer said dully.
Julia nodded.
Between the two of them, they forced the door open and lifted Walt out to the pavement.
“Easy,” the farmer said.
Julia stood over Walt’s limp body. His jaw was broken and twisted to one side. His chest was bloody; blood trickled from his nose; his hair was matted with blood.
“He’s still breathing,” the farmer said hoarsely.
He looks so boyish, she thought. I can’t believe . . . he doesn’t seem a killer. I hate whoever made a killer out of him.
Walt’s