Who Goes Here?

9

A night’s sleep in a comfortable hotel bed, the feeling of being clean and well fed, the knowledge that he was properly dressed and had money in his pocket—all these should have improved Peace’s frame of mind as he set out to walk to the spaceport in Touchdown City.

Instead, his brain used its renewed energies to dredge up further hints at his abnormality. Not only did it appear that he had an unsavoury reputation as far as small boys were concerned, but there was the curious business of Professor Legge’s daughter and the time machine. He, Warren Peace, had defied death at gunpoint rather than step into the machine—and yet he had willingly thrown himself into it to escape the embrace of a woman. The only crumb of comfort he could derive from his memory of the incident was that the female concerned had resembled a two-metres-tall amorous blancmange. Perhaps, Peace speculated, he would have reacted differently had she been young, slim and pretty.

As he walked through the crisp brightness of the autumn morning, Peace put himself to the test by staring long and hard at every attractive girl he saw among the city crowds. He derived a certain aesthetic pleasure from their appearance, but to his disappointment felt none of the stirrings he believed appropriate to a recent member of the brutal and licentious soldiery.

The experiment came to an abrupt end when, in his anxiety for results, he failed to observe that one subject was accompanied by a bull-necked heavyweight of jealous disposition who spun on his heel and made a grab for Peace’s collar. The agility Peace had developed in a dozen battle zones got him out of what could have been a nasty situation, but he decided not to risk drawing any further attention to himself.

He was not scheduled to join the Legion until the following day, which meant he was not now being hunted as a deserter—nor had he yet done any of the other things which were to get him into trouble—so it seemed advisable to keep his nose clean until he got safely to Earth. The civil spaceport was further away than the hotel clerk had given him to believe, and Peace began to regret his decision to walk. On impulse he hailed a passing taxi. The yellow car pulled to a halt at the curb beside him and its window slid down to reveal the lugubrious countenance of Trev, the driver who was destined to have the same window beat in on top of him by Peace a month later.

Peace instinctively covered his own face with his hands and hissed, “Go away! Why don’t you leave me alone?”

Trev’s face twitched with indignation and he accelerated off along the street, mouthing silently.

Unnerved by the brief encounter, Peace made himself as inconspicuous as possible during the remainder of the walk. Ten minutes later he reached the spaceport and was surprised to find it was only about the size of a large sports stadium, and had a similar kind of architecture. So many spaceships were continuously arriving and departing that the air above the field was darkened by a huge spout-shaped cloud of blurred dumb-bells. Peace was shocked by the magnitude of the traffic control problems involved, until he noticed that the ship’s trajectories criss-crossed through each other at will, and it dawned on him that the peculiar form of locomotion the vessels employed, in which they were neither in one place nor another at any given instant, meant it was impossible for them to collide.

He nodded his approval, conceding that—ugly though the cubist spaceships were compared to his visualized gleaming spires—they were an excellent mode of transport. He went into a ticket office, paid four hundred monits for a one-way trip to Earth, and emerged into a lounge which provided a panoramic view of the myriad ships actually landing and taking off. Craning his neck to take in more of the scene, he shouldered his way towards the low barrier at which the customs scanners were positioned, and had almost reached it when he became aware of bronze-gold reflections hovering at the edge of his field of vision. He turned and found himself looking at two Oscars who were calmly strolling among the knots of passengers and sightseers.

Peace’s instinctive reaction was to flee—his feet were making preliminary movements of their own accord—but his intellect dictated otherwise. Running would be the surest way of drawing attention to himself, and there was the overriding consideration that he was not guilty of any offence. There was no way of telling if these Oscars were the same pair who had chased him in his subjective yesterday—their smoothly cast features were almost identical—but the point was that this was the ninth of November, and therefore his desertion from the Legion, his abscondence from the Blue Toad, and the embarrassing episode at the movie house all lay a month in the future. Even if the Oscars could read minds, as some people had said, they could not persecute them for crimes they had yet to commit. He took a pack of self-igniting cigarettes from his pocket, sucked one into life and tried to appear relaxed and unconcerned.

The Oscars continued on their course through the departure lounge, the morning light glinting on tapering muscular bodies, their ruby-eyed faces impassive. People moved respectfully out of their way, but otherwise hardly seemed to notice the presence of the statuesque beings.

Wishing that he could be similarly unconcerned, Peace tried to blank out all memory of his misdeeds and discovered that resolving not to think of any particular subject produces an effect opposite to the one intended.

He pursed his lips and began to whistle tunelessly, a trick he felt would make him the image of bored innocence, but had forgotten his lungs were full of cigarette smoke. He emitted a single, hacking cough, loud as the bark of a walrus, which caused some bystanders to start violently and drew glances of sympathy from others.

The Oscars turned their heads towards him, and both came to a halt.

Peace, trying to stare down the inhuman gazes, puffed faster at his cigarette. I’m not guilty, his mind chanted in panic. I haven’t done all those awful things.

The Oscars’ heads rotated slowly until they were looking into each other’s eyes. Their silent communion lasted for several seconds, then both nodded and came striding towards Peace. So determined was he to prove he had nothing to fear that he waited until they were almost upon him before his nerve broke. Ducking to avoid outstretched brazen arms, he bolted for the only open ground available, which happened to be the landing field itself. He reached the customs barrier and, his muscles again supercharged by fear, sprang cleanly over it and headed out into the haphazard alleys formed by the parked spaceships. A clangor of falling metal behind him announced that, characteristically, the Oscars had chosen to run straight through the barrier.

Their footsteps drummed loudly in his wake, growing closer with every microsecond.

Peace cast around wildly for an escape route and saw a dark rectangle which was an open door at one end of a spaceship. He dashed into it, slammed the heavy steel door into place; to his relief, it locked automatically. Grateful for the fortress-like protection of the ship’s armoured shell, he staggered across what appeared to be a control room and dropped into its single cushioned seat. Breathing noisily, struggling to repress the trembling of his limbs, he surveyed his new environment and tried to plan his next move. The attempt at cerebration ended, stillborn, as one of the loudest sounds he had ever heard reverberated through the square room and, in the same instant, a bulge the size of a dinner plate appeared on the door he had just closed.

Peace’s face contorted with shock as he deduced that one of the Oscars had punched the steel slab with his fist— and had almost succeeded in holing it. With fingers crammed into his mouth, he stared in horror at the distorted metal and realized that had the Oscar thought of striking near the lock the door would almost certainly have burst open.

Perhaps, he thought, avidly clutching a thread of hope, they aren’t very intelligent. Perhaps that’s their one weak point, their Achilles’ heel. If so, how can I turn this fact to my advantage? How can I…?

Again his powers of thought were swamped by a cataclysmic sound, a second bulge appeared on the door, and it was born home to Peace that the Oscars simply had no need for brain power. They were invincible as they were. Driven almost beyond reason, he swung round to the sloping control console at which he was seated. A curious ripple passed over his vision, accompanied by a pins-and-needles sensation within his head, and for a fleeting moment he saw the array of instruments and controls through the eyes of another person. He stroked his hand down two rows of toggle switches, hit a large red button, and pulled upwards on the central control stick.

The blank wall in front of him became transparent. There was a glimpse of the spaceport buildings falling away below, a flash of blue sky turning to black—and then he was gazing, transfixed, at the hard, hostile brilliance of the stars.

The speed of the ship was so great that Peace could see a flowing change of parallax in the nearer stars. Entranced by the spectacle, he watched the bright specks swimming by; then it occurred to him that in order to produce such an effect the ship had to be going like a bat out of hell—and he had no idea of where it was headed. He should have been overjoyed at once more being delivered from the hands of the Oscars, who seemed to bear him a grudge, but now there was a new danger of his being lost for ever in the deeps of space. It was beginning to seem that there was no end to the unpleasant surprises fate had in store for him, that no matter how many catastrophes he avoided there would always be more lying in wait…

“That’s it,” Peace said in an aggrieved voice. “What’s the point of struggling? I’m just going to sit here and accept my destiny—and what a strange and lonely destiny it’s going to be!

“On and on I’ll go,” he intoned, warming to the subject, “far beyond the meagre confines of this galaxy and all the galaxies about it. Outstripping the speed of laggard light, on laughter-gilded wings, I’ll suffer a C-change. And what marvellous sights I’ll see before death finally closes my eyes—nebulae writhing in the exquisite torment of creation, the cosmic beacons of supernovae, universes like fireflies tangled in a silver braid…” Pleased with his newfound fatalism, Peace crossed his arms, sat back in the deep chair and made ready for eternity. He remained at one with the cosmos for perhaps ten seconds, and then boredom set in. It was quickly followed by panic. “Bugger the fireflies and silver braid,” he cried, leaping from the chair. “I want to go home.”

He ran to the transparent front wall and hunted all over it, as though having moved two paces closer could help him identify the pinpoint of light which would be Sol. Even in his distraught condition he realized almost at once that the quest was hopeless—there were millions of suns, scattered ahead of the ship in such profusion that it was impossible to impose any kind of order on them. Nothing short of a powerful computer would be able to cope with the astrogation problems involved, he decided, and caught his breath as the pins-and-needles he had experienced earlier returned in force, causing a strange easing sensation within his head.

It was rather as if a tourniquet had been relaxed, except that the renewed flux was far less tangible than blood, consisting as it did of an etheral slurry of associations, ideas and concepts. Am I getting my memory back? he wondered, returning to the spaceship control console. Have I ever flown a ship like this?

He sat down and examined the various panels more carefully, this time beginning to appreciate that there were a number of logical groupings. The rows of switches he had thrown in his first flash of perception had labels which identified them with transceiver warm-up and manual take-off, but there was a separate module, resembling a typewriter keyboard, at the top of which was a plate engraved with the letters A.D.S. Reasoning, prayerfully, that they stood for Automatic Destination Selector, he tapped out E-A-R-T-H and was rewarded by an immediate rotation of the star fields ahead, evidence that the ship was changing course. A red circle began to blink in the middle of the transparent wall. It was enclosing one of the few tiny areas of absolute blackness visible to him, and he realized he was so far from Earth that the light from its parent sun had been unable to make the journey. But even as he watched, a mote of light appeared at the centre of the circle and began to grow brighter.

Satisfied that things had begun to go better for him, he studied the other modules and found one labelled Autoland—which disposed of his worries about setting the ship down safely.

Emboldened by his success and growing sense of familiarity with the controls, he switched on some music. The first minitape he tried yielded an orchestral recording of a piece by Sibelius, the ponderous cadences of which might have been designed as mood music for stargazers.

He sighed approvingly and relaxed into the deep cushions, determined to make the most of a calm interlude. Now that he was assured of the partnership being purely temporary, he again permitted his soul to unite with the cosmos, and—to add a visual garnish to his meditations—flicked toggle switches which caused the remaining walls of the control room to become transparent. As is often the case with artistic final flourishes, the move proved to be a serious mistake as far as his peace of mind was concerned.

Only a few paces away to his left, the upper surfaces of their bodies reflecting red and green pulses from the ship’s marker lights, the two Oscars clung to the outside of the hull.

I’ve killed them, Peace thought, terrified. I’ve dragged them into interstellar space and killed them!

His fear abated, only to return tenfold, as he saw that—incredibly—the enigmatic beings were still moving.

Showing no signs of discomfort in the airless void, they were holding on to the ship with casual one-handed grips while pointing out celestial landmarks to each other, like tourists on a pleasure trip. Peace stared at them, petrified. Every now and then one of the Oscars would turn slitted ruby eyes in his direction—apparently without seeing him. He guessed the transparency of the hull was a one-way effect.

Peace’s brow furrowed as he got a new inkling of the forces arrayed against him. Life had been difficult enough before the Oscars had come on the scene to hound him through time and space— now he learned they were indestructible, apparently capable of surviving anywhere under any conditions. The impossibility of visualizing what he had done to deserve such relentless pursuit added to Peace’s misery. He lowered his face into his hands and thought seriously about ending the persecution by driving the ship into a sun. It would be a quick, clean solution to all his problems, but—a single crystal of resentment formed and began to grow in the cauldron of his mental turmoil—was he prepared to accept it at this eleventh hour? After all he had endured in the past month, was he going to allow two metallized morons to prevent him learning the truth about himself?

He raised his head, sat up straight and began to analyse his new predicament. The Oscars had obviously been within the field generated by the transceiver towers at each end of the ship, which was why they had been carried into space with it. Ryan had taught him that the vessel could be regarded as being at rest, in spite of possessing an effective velocity, which meant there was no inertia and made it easy for outside passengers to remain in place. He was positive, however, that the fierce accelerations of “normal” space flight would quickly dislodge any unwanted joyriders. The ship’s target sun, Sol, was already growing brilliant in the forward screen as he turned his attention back to the control console. He found a panel labelled AUX. NUC. PROP. MODE, and with growing assurance identified it as a set of controls for flying the ship on nuclear propulsion when the main system was inoperative. His fingers positioned themselves naturally on the altitude selectors and the miniature joystick, and he knew in the instant that he had flown spaceships at sometime in his previous life, and that he could make the one he was in perform any manoeuvre he wished.

Snorting with triumph, he shut down the transceiver drive and the ship—which had been travelling at millions of kilometres a second— immediately came to a halt. It did so without a tremor or jolt, the fact that it had no inertia making the abrupt change of condition unnoticeable.

A glance to his left confirmed that the two Oscars, quite unawares, were nonchalantly holding themselves in place by their fingertips. A look of gleeful malice spread over his face as he made ready to blast the ship forward under full normal acceleration. He touched the firing button—and his expression changed to one of dismay as he found himself unable to depress the concave disk. No matter how many commands he gave his fingers it refused to move.

“This is crazy,” he said aloud, staring accusingly at the dissident digit, trying to reason with it.

“Those things out there aren’t even human. I mean, they’re monsters.”

Lots of people say you’re a monster, he could imagine the finger replying, but you didn’t like the idea of being marooned in space, did you?

“Listen to me, knucklehead,” Peace argued, “those characters get their kicks by feeding helpless men to their pet throwrugs.”

You’ve only got Dinkle’s word for that-and, anyway, since when did two wrongs made a right?

You can’t do it. Warren. You can’t inflict that fate on anybody or anything.

“All right, all right!” Peace glowered helplessly at his finger for a moment, then revenged himself on it by poking it into his nose.

With his left hand he activated the transceiver drive and in less than a second the ship was again travelling Earthwards at a speed of several hundred light years an hour. The Oscars continued to float beside the hull in weightless relaxation, red and green highlights flowing like oil on their massive torsos.

Peace transferred his attention to the forward screen and noted that the point of searing brilliance which was Sol had grown into a disk. It began to drift to one side of the winking red circle—an indication that the ship was now homing in on Earth—and he knew he was running out of time in which to solve the problem posed by the Oscars. Unless he did something quickly he was going to find them hammering the spaceship’s door to pieces as soon as he touched down.

As if to illustrate the urgency of his plight, a blue-white orb appeared in the target circle and ballooned outwards until it was recognizably the planet Earth with the escorting Moon peeping over its shoulder. On the control console a sign lit up advising Peace to feed details of his chosen landing point or go over to manual control. He stared in perplexity at the broad blue curvatures of the mother world for several seconds before deriving inspiration from its predominant colour.

Taking control of the ship, he steered a course down through the atmosphere, pleased by the absence of re-entry effects, and slanted towards the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The descent was comparatively leisurely, giving him plenty of time to look for a suitable dumping ground. He found a group of small atolls, brought the ship to a halt in the air about a hundred metres above a lagoon, and— after taking a deep breath to steady his nerves— switched off the transceiver drive.

The ship fell like a lead weight.

Peace counted two seconds and fired the nuclear drive, with dramatic effect. As the thrusters came into play, the plummeting ship clanged as if it had struck an invisible barrier, and Peace—who had been perched on the edge of his seat—was forcibly driven down on to his knees, catching his chin on the edge of the console. Nursing his jaw, which felt as though it had been unhinged, he looked to the left and in spite of his pain was overjoyed to see that the Oscars had disappeared.

The ship’s structure was creaking and protesting as the thunderous nuclear jets bore it aloft again. Peace put the metal giant out of its misery by making a rapid switch back to the transeiver mode, and swung into a curve for a slow pass close to the atoll. Ripples were still spreading across its central lagoon, but he could see down into the clear water without difficulty. The Oscars were standing on the floor of the lagoon, unperturbed at being under several fathoms of water. Their faces tilted upwards as they watched the spaceship cruise by overhead, and it seemed to Peace that they were shaking their fists at him.

“Same to you, fellers,” he called. “Watch out for rust.”

Chuckling with satisfaction, he boosted the ship high into the afternoon sky and set a course for Porterburg, the city he presumed to be his home.

In an older type of craft the navigational problems would have been considerable, but Peace simply flew in a sharp climb until he had reached orbital height—a manoeuvre which took only ten seconds—and could see the entire western seaboard of the North American continent laid out beneath him. From there it was easy to pick out the estuary of the Columbia River, in the middle latitudes of the long narrow Republic of Califanada which stretched from Mexico to Alaska. He could also see the planetary terminator sweeping in from the east, and knew the short winter’s day was drawing to a close in Porterburg and Fort Eccles.

Cool intangible fingers stroked his spine as he realized that his previous self was down there at that moment, preparing to carry his burden of remorse for one more night before making the fateful visit to the Legion’s recruiting station. It briefly occurred to Peace that he had no intention of joining the Legion and therefore no longer required a lever to get him out of a service contract. The wisest thing might be to steal away quietly and allow his past, with all its guilt, to remain a mystery. He flirted with the notion for a moment, then shook his head and put the ship into a steep descent. Unhampered by inertial and aerodynamic effects, the vessel reached the vicinity of Porterburg in some twenty seconds.

As the city appeared on the forward screen, an accretion of silvery cubes on a broad bend of the Columbia, he remembered he was now guilty of stealing a spaceship and was likely to be arrested if he put down at any civil or military landing field. Making a snap decision, he overflew Porterburg by about forty kilometres and selected a snow-covered pasture which was reasonably close to a small community, but screened from it by low hills. The ship settled with a jolt and the control room door slid aside to admit a gust of chill November air.

Peace stepped out into the silent twilight and took his bearings. Bordering the field was a second-class roadway which looked as though it ran straight to the community he had noticed from the air. There was nobody in the area who could have seen his arrival, and within a matter of minutes darkness would cloak both the spaceship and Peace’s subsequent movements. A comforting sense of being in command of the situation burgeoned within him as he realized that all he had to do was play it cool until the morning, avoid attracting any attention, and—above all—control his tendency to become involved in silly accidents.

Turning up his collar, he squared his shoulders and set off walking towards the road.

“Just a moment, young man,” a woman’s voice called imperiously. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Peace froze in his tracks, his eyes wide with disbelief, and turned around.

The door in the ship’s central passenger section had sprung open and, almost filling it, was a stout, middle-aged woman wearing a straw sun bonnet and a flowered dress. Other portly and middle-aged ladies, similarly attired, milled about behind her in the lighted interior, emitting bleats of consternation. Peace staggered like a man who had been sandbagged as he realized he had stolen a ship which was full of Aspatrian passengers.

“See that?” another woman said, joining the first in the doorway. “He’s drunk! I told you the pilot was drunk. Coffee all over me I’ve got, and it’s all his fault.”

“Where are we anyway?” a third chimed in. “This doesn’t look like the Sunnyside Weight-free Pleasure Asteroid to me.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Peace mumbled, backing away. Gradually gaining speed until he had reached the safe maximum for that form of perambulation, he turned and ran as fast as he could. The party of stout ladies watched until he had faded out of sight in the gathering dusk before turning to each other with looks of indignation. Silence reigned for several seconds, and then—by mutual consent—they produced subetheric whistles from their purses and blew a long and concerted blast of pure outrage.

Five thousand kilometres away to the south-east, where the afternoon sun was still shining on a Pacific atoll, two gold-gleaming supermen—who had been staring irresolutely at the sand—suddenly raised their heads. They remained in a listening posture for a time, red fire pulsing in their eyes, the hairless domes of their skulls reflecting the sun’s brilliance.

At last the giants turned to each other, nodded, and ran down a sloping shelf of coral into the sea. Too heavy and compacted for swimming, they continued to run along the ocean floor after the water had closed over their heads, and sea creatures prudently darted out of the way as the invaders of their domain struck a course for Califanada.

Panting loudly with exhaustion, Peace leaped over a boundary ditch and reached the verge of the deserted highway. Snow which had been cleared from the road itself formed a low moraine on each side. Slithering over this last barrier with some difficulty, Peace brushed snow and ice droplets from his clothing, shoved his hands in his pockets and began walking in the direction of the nearby settlement.

Everything is still all right, he assured himself. Those old trouts on the ship are bound to be a bit upset, but they don’t know how lucky they are I changed my mind about going far beyond the meagre confines of this galaxy and all the galaxies about it, and the suffering a C-change bit. That would have really given them something to complain about! Anyway, it will be hours before they can contact police, and in the meantime I’ve got plenty of money for transport, I’m correctly and inconspicuously dressed, I’m close to Porterburg, and I’m fit and healthy-except for a suspected fracture of the lower mandible, and perhaps some frostbite.

All I have to do now, he impressed on himself, building up his confidence, is stop being so damned accident prone. Play it cool! Blend into the background! Even I can stay out of trouble till the morning.

The concentrated dose of positive thinking had an immediate effect on Peace’s spirits. A certain amount of spring returned to his stride and a few minutes later—as though honoring the promise of divine assistance for those who help themselves—the lights of a bus appeared in the distance. As the vehicle drew closer Peace saw that its destination was Porterburg, and he breathed a sigh of gratitude. He signalled the driver to stop and, avoiding any possibility of having his toes flattened by a wheel on the narrow road, mounted the glassy bank of snow and waited until the bus had drawn up in front of him. Its doors opened with a pneumatic gasp. Peace edged forward, his feet shot out from under him, the icy surface hit the back of his head and, with no perceptible lapse of time, he found himself lying, hands still in pockets, in pitch darkness under the bus. Metal components churned dangerously near the tip of his nose as he struggled to get his hands free of the pockets, which had suddenly developed a vice-like grip on his wrists.

“Where did that joker go?” The bus driver’s voice could scarcely be heard above the noise of machinery, but it had a distinct note of impatience.

“I’m down here,” Peace croaked. “Help me somebody!”

“People flag you down, and then it turns out they don’t want a ride after all,” the driver grumbled. “I don’t know—it must be a new craze.”

There came the sound of doors closing, the bus rolled forward and its nearside wheel brushed the hair on top of Peace’s head. He was congratulating himself on, at least, having escaped a gory death when a projection near the vehicle’s rear end struck him in the ribs and trundled him along the ground for a short distance before releasing him in an untidy heap in the centre of the road.

Peace struggled to his feet, clutching his side, and swore at the departing bus. When its lights had finally vanished into the night, he looked down at himself and was aghast to see that his jacket and hose, immaculate only a short time earlier, were oil-stained and torn. He giggled hysterically for a moment, then clapped a hand over his mouth.

“I’m not going to let this thing throw me,” he announced to the lonely expanse of moonlit snow all round. “I am the master of my own destiny.” Taking stock of his physical condition, he found he could still walk although, in addition to a contused jaw, he now sported a throbbing lump on the back of his head and at every breath was experiencing a sharp pain which suggested one or more broken ribs. Travelling by public transport no longer seemed a good idea, in view of his appearance, but he had enough money to go by taxi to Porterburg and find a discreet hotel. After a shower and a night’s recuperation, he told himself, he would be almost as good as new. The first essential was to find a telephone, and from there on everything would be straightforward. Drawing the tatters of his jacket closer around himself, Peace once again set out for the nearby community, which—in spite of its geographical proximity— was beginning to seem as distant and unattainable as Shangri La.

Twenty minutes later he passed a sign which read, “HARTLEYVILLE—Pop. 347”, and limped down the single main street in search of a telephone kiosk.

Although it was early in the evening the street seemed deserted, and consequently he felt a pang of irritation on reaching a phone box to find that not only was it in use, but that there was another prospective caller waiting to get in. Reminding himself of the need to be philosophical in the face of such minor annoyances, Peace took his place in line and hoped his condition would not attract any comment. He need not have worried on that score, because the red-haired man in front—hardly sparing him a glance—was devoting all his attention to hammering on the door with his fist and shouting abuse at the man inside. It appeared he had been kept waiting for some time and, lacking Peace’s hard-won stoicism, was nearing a state of apoplexy. He kept darting from one window to another, making gestures of frustration and rage, but the dimly-seen caller within foiled him each time by turning away, as users of call boxes have done since time immemorial.

Peace watched the little drama with Olympian amusement, pondering on the pettiness of the troubles which some mortals allowed to disrupt their serenity. He was beginning to wish he could drop a hint about what real misfortune was like when the red-haired man uttered a climatic burst of obscenities,” scurried across the street and disappeared between two buildings. Less than a minute later the man in the box finished his call, came out, nodded to Peace and faded away into the night, leaving him free to make use of the telephone.

Patience does it every time, Peace thought smugly, stepping into the box. He had just begun to conjure up information about taxi services on the illuminated directory display when the door was yanked open behind him. A rough hand dragged him out into the open and he found himself gazing up into the flinty countenance of a very large and cold-eyed policeman. The red-haired man had returned to the scene with the policeman and was hopping up and down in the background.

“That’s him!” he said vindictively. “Twenty minutes he kept me waiting out here in the cold.

Run him in, Cyril, run him in!”

“Do me a favour, Reuben,” the cop replied. “Don’t try to teach me the job, huh?”

“But twenty minutes, Cyril! Everybody knows you’re only allowed three minutes in a public call box.”

“Pardon me, officer, but this is all a mistake,” Peace said, his heart sinking. “I’ve only been here a minute and…”

“Liar!” Reuben screamed. “He’s trying to con you, Cyril. He thinks you’re a dumb hick cop.”

“Is that a fact?” The policeman gave Peace a stare in which the hostility was augmented by dawning suspicion. “How did you get all messed up like that? What’s your name, mister, and where are you from?”

“Me?” Peace spoke with the calmness of desperation. “I’m from nowhere.”

Summoning reserves of strength whose existence he had not suspected, he gave the policeman a violent shove in the chest. The big man, taken unawares, lost his footing on the packed snow and fell on his back with an appalling crash of harness and equipment. Peace leapt over him and fled into one of the alleys which had begun to feature so prominently in his affairs, running so swiftly that he felt at one with the night wind, scarcely aware of his feet touching the frozen ground.

A stabbing pain in the side of his chest brought him to a standstill in a very short time, the effortless dream-flight at an end. He looked all around in the darkness. He could see nothing but moon-silvered trees and flat snowscape beyond, and there were no sounds of pursuit.

Sitting down on a convenient tree stump, he waited for his mind to catch up with his body.

Though it appeared he was safe for the minute, he found it chastening to reflect that within half an hour of setting foot on Earth he had contrived to injure himself, ruin his new clothes, and get into fresh trouble with the law.

There’s no doubt about it, he thought, adding to his little store of self-knowledge. I’m quite definitely accident prone.

The revelation prompted him to make a tough reappraisal of his plans. As his breathing gradually returned to normal there came the conviction that his only hope of keeping the morning appointment lay in getting to Porterburg alone and unaided— which meant he would have to walk all night. The prospect was a daunting one, especially as the air was growing noticeably colder by the minute, but all other options had retreated or vanished.

Aching from head to toe, already beginning to shiver, Peace lurched to his feet and began the dismal forty-kilometre trek he hoped would end at the crossroads of the past, present and future. His bout of philosophizing while waiting for the telephone already seemed pathetic, but he made a last effort to locate at lease one positive aspect of the situation, to find a nugget of hope which would sustain him through the night. At first the task seemed quite impossible—then his thoughts focused on the single, glittering achievement of the day.

“Thank God,” he said fervently, hobbling through the snow, “I managed to shake off those damned Oscars.”