Her laughter stopped as abruptly as if cut by a knife. “So do I,” she answered. “I’m worried. He’s been gone longer than he said he would.” Her gaze settled on the two Lizards, who stood waiting for Yeager to tell them what to do next. He nodded. Everyone’s life would have been simpler without the Lizards.
“Anybody gives you a bad time because he’s not around, you let me know,” he said. He’d never had a reputation for being a hard case while he was playing ball, but he hadn’t carried around a bayonet-tipped rifle then, either.
“Thanks, Sam; I may do that,” she said. Her tone was just cool enough to let him know again that he shouldn’t be the one who gave her a bad time. He answered with a sober expression that let her know he got the message.
He turned to the Lizards, gestured with his gun. “Come on, you lugs.” He stood aside to let them precede him out of the office. Barbara Larssen picked up the telephone on her desk, made a face, put it down. No dial tone, Yeager guessed-everything was erratic these days. Burkett’s next go-round with the Lizards would have to wait a while.
The Plymouth’s engine made a sudden, dreadful racket, as if it had just been hit by machine-gun fire. Jens Larssen knew a mechanical death rattle when he heard one. On the dashboard panel in front of him, the battery and temperature lights both glowed red. He wasn’t overheated and he knew he still had juice. What he didn’t have any more was a car. It rolled forward another couple of hundred yards, until he pulled off onto the shoulder to keep from blocking Highway 250 for anyone else.
“Shit,” he said as he sat and stared at the dashboard lights. If he hadn’t had to use garbage for fuel so much of the time, if he hadn’t had to try to make his way over bombed-out roads or sometimes over no roads at all, if the damned Lizards had never come… he wouldn’t have been stuck here somewhere in eastern Ohio, two whole states away from where he was supposed to be.
He raised his eyes and looked out through the dusty, bug-splashed windshield. Up ahead, the buildings of a small town dented the skyline. Small-town mechanics had helped keep the car going more than once before. Maybe they could do it again. He had his doubts-the, Plymouth had never made a noise like this one before-but it was something he had to try.
He left the key in the ignition when he got out-good luck to anybody who tried to drive the car away. Slamming the driver’s side door relieved his anger a little. He took off his jacket, slung it over his shoulder, and started up the road toward the town.
There wasn’t much traffic. In fact, there wasn’t any traffic. He tramped past a couple of cars that looked as if they’d been sitting on the shoulder a lot longer than his, and past a burnt-out wreck that must have been strafed from the air and then shoved over to the roadside, but no cars passed him. All he could hear was his own footfalls on asphalt.
Just outside the outskirts of town, he came to a signboard: WELCOME TO STRASBURG, HOME OF GARVER BROTHERS-WORLD’S BIGGEST LITTLE STORE. Below that, in smaller letters, it said POPULATION (1930), 1,305.
Jens blew air out between his lips to make a snuffling noise. Here was Smalltown U.S.A., all right: even though the “new” census was already two years old, the mayor or whoever hadn’t got around to fixing the numbers yet. Why bother, when they probably hadn’t changed by more than a couple of dozen?
He walked on. The first gas station he came to was closed and locked. A big fat spider was sitting in a web spun between two of the gas pumps, so it had likely been closed for a while. That didn’t look encouraging.
The drugstore half a block farther on had its door open. He decided to go in and see what they had at their soda fountain. At the moment, he wouldn’t have turned down anything cold and wet, or even warm and wet. He still had some money in his pocket; Colonel Groves had been generous down in White Sulphur Springs. Being treated as a national resource was something he’d have no trouble getting used to.
Gloom filled the inside of the drugstore; the electricity was out. “Anybody in here?” Larssen called, peering, down the aisles.
“Back here,” a woman answered. But that wasn’t the only answer he got. From much closer came startled hisses. Two Lizards walked around a display of Wildroot Creme Oil that was taller than they were. One carried a gun; the other had his arms full of flashlights and batteries.
Larssen’s first impulse was to turn around and run like hell. He hadn’t known he’d blundered into enemy-held territory. He felt as if he were carrying a sign that said DANGEROUS HUMAN-NUCLEAR PHYSICIST in letters three feet high. Fortunately, he didn’t give in to the impulse. As he realized after a moment, to the Lizards he was just another person: for all they knew, he might have lived in Strasburg.
