Sheen’s car was larger and faster; her friends had pro-vided well. Stile did not inquire how they had produced it so quickly. Some computer entry had surely been made to account for its use. They zoomed over the sand at some hundred to hundred and ten kilometers per hour, a velocity even Neysa could not match. In Phaze, she would have to run sixty to seventy miles an hour cross-country. She might facilitate things by changing to firefly-form to cross the worst of it, but she would inevitably fall behind. A huge plume of dust swirled up behind each car. Be-fore long they had closed in on Red’s vehicle, traveling a little to the side so as to be clear of her cometlike wake. That dust served to emphasize the barrenness that was Proton—a world that science had improved into desolation. Red cut southeast, angling toward the Purple Mountain range. Where was she going?
“Do we have any way to bring her to a stop?” Stile asked. “I don’t like getting too far ahead of Neysa, in case we have action on the other side of the curtain.” “Oh, yes. This is an attack vehicle. We can fire a disrupter to short out her electrical system.”
“That’s ideal!”
But now Red’s car shot into a channel in the mountain.
It slewed through a curvaceous pass and up a barren slope.
Sheen’s car followed, but could not get a direct shot at it. Now, directly behind, they suffered the full effect of the dust-wake. Red obviously was familiar with this region; Sheen and Stile were not.
On they skewed, wending through the mountain foothills and gullies at dangerously high velocity, never getting a clean shot. “I don’t like this,” Stile said. “She thinks in terms of traps. Things that wait quiescent until invoked. She’ll have something set up here.”
“I can call my friends on the car’s band, and ask them to—“
“No! They have to maintain their anonymity. A clerical error freed this car; that’s as far as they can go. It’s my job.”
“No, they do not need to resort to supposed error. There are ways to—“
“No.”
“I believe I have remarked on your defective living logic before.”
“I believe so,” Stile agreed.
“Do you have any assurance at all that you will survive this foolishness?”
“Yes, the Oracle says that I will sire a son by the Lady Blue, whom I just married, and since I have not yet—“ The car began to ride up the side of the channel.
“You married the Lady Blue?”
Oops. He had forgotten the ramification that would have on this side of the curtain. “I did.”
She brought the car back to level, but the course seemed none too steady. “Then it is over between us.”
“No! Not over. Just—modified. We’re still friends—“
“With a machine?”
“With a machine!” he shouted. “You’re still a person! I still love you as a person!”
She accelerated, closing the gap that had opened be-tween vehicles, though the dust obscured almost every-thing. “Yes, of course.”
And Stile knew that whatever he had gained in Phaze had been at a necessary cost in Proton. The next stage in his inevitable alienation from Sheen had come to pass. They had known this would happen, but still it hurt. “I don’t suppose you’d settle for an oath of friendship?” he asked with an attempt at lightness.
“I am less complicated than a living creature like Neysa. Oaths are not part of my programming.”
Stile was spared the embarrassment of struggling further with this dialogue by their sudden encounter with Red’s car. She had drawn it up in an emergency stop just around a turn in the channel and jettisoned herself with the emergency release. Now her stalled vehicle blocked the way at a narrow neck, impossible to avoid. Stile saw her running up the steep slope, getting clear of the inevitable crash. The trap had sprung.
Sheen’s finger moved with mechanical speed and precision, touching a button on the dashboard. The ejection mechanism operated. Stile was hurled in his seat out the top of the car. A gravity diffuser clicked on, softening his fall, letting him float to the ground.
The moving car collided with the stationary one. Both exploded. A ball of flame encompassed the mass, and smoke billowed outward. Protonite didn’t detonate like that; Red’s vehicle must have been booby-trapped with explosives. It had been a trap, all right. Then Stile realized he was alone. “Sheen!” he cried in anguish. “Why didn’t you eject too?” But he knew why. She had wanted to be junked cleanly when she lost him; she had seen to it herself.
He knew there was nothing he could do for her. It was Red he had to go after. He shucked his car seat and charged across to intercept the Adept.
She had a hand weapon. She pointed it at him. Stile dived, taking advantage of the irregularity of the ground. The laser beam seared the sand ahead of him, sending up a puff of acrid fumes. Then he crawled rapidly to the side, grabbed a small rock and hurled it at her. He did this without lifting his head or body; he could throw accurately by sound.
