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recognized it for what it was. There was a brief case behind the front seat. He took
everything.
When he had returned to the vehicle and it had been flushed by compressed air till it
could be set on  Normal, which made a faint hissing only, Swenton started the electric
motor and pulled onto the road. Going was slow for the first few mites as the area lay in the
outer limits of search. Sand had made small dunes on the battered and potholed pavement and
there were places that had to be skirted as flash floods had torn away the original one-lane-
each-way pavement. When they came up on what had been Interstate 15, they made better
time. A single lane was kept fairly open on that venerable road and any hampering damage
was repaired, at least in time and to a degree.
The vehicle began to travel at thirty miles an hour, it s motor whining faintly, air
supply singing in, the two officers, by then,  desuited and comfortable.
Once, the sun came out. That startled them both. Of course, it had happened before,
and been reported by other patrols, but to Swenton, at least, he seemed that this sudden surge
of light was more intense (and lasted longer) than any he d experienced or any others had
described.
 Air clearing a little? Could be. . . .
Glenn Howard had recovered consciousness soon after the van had turned into the
feeder-road.
He heard the two talk. He found he could see clearly through the sides of the vehicle,
but didn t know they were opaque from the other side. He raised on his neck far enough to
check the fact that the pair of nightmare bubble-heads he d assumed to be dream-figures,
weren t. One drove and the other manipulated gadgets. Something hissed, the motor wasn t
an internal combustion kind, and his sense of threat in their first view of the pair, together
with his blackout when he opened the door, made him wary.
He felt it would be a mistake to announce his recovery, at least right away. From the
soon-overheard radio discussion, he gathered more information, all coherent and yet
unfathomable. He slid his eyes to the side and looked out at the desert.
It was the same.
It was until he saw objects that should have been  the same but were not.
Power poles were down.
Here and there, he spotted a car or truck, off the road, and looking like wrecks.
Rusted, fabric rotted, tops collapsed, signs on commercial vehicles faded, flaked, unreadable.
For a brief stretch they passed a railroad siding and on it, he saw a few freight cars. Empty,
save for one in the open doors of which were burst bales of, perhaps, cotton. And beside
these, almost certainly, the bones of human legs and ribs with a skull if any in the darker
interior.
When the vehicle swung onto the Throughway, Glenn identified that. But Interstate
15 was not really recognizable. Deceased and rusted vehicles lay in tangles on both sides of
the cleared track the truck followed. Here and there, retaining wall sections had fallen. At
first he imagined the vehicular straggle was the result of long-ago chain collisions. In a little
while he realized these decaying heaps had been shoved aside to make the open surface they
were using.
He concentrated.
It seemed clear that something was wrong with him.
He told himself to lie limp because he needed time. He feared any attention.
A dream? Impossible. He was awake and knew it.
Mania? He had never heard of this vivid and coherent kind of madness.
Bodily dysfunction? Toxemia?
He checked his nervous command, muscles, senses, by a progression of little acts.
Nothing seemed impaired.
He then went over the past hours and days. He recalled the Boiling Wells interlude
perfectly. Remembered, verbatim, what he d said to Lenore. As far as he was able to discern,
his memory, his other senses and bodily functions were intact.
It was everything else that was wrong.
The two cops, if they were that, in bubble-heads. Like the fancied  little men from
flying saucers. The thought even amused him somewhat, despite his confusion. He had
never had any patience with the  flying saucer people,  addicts, he called them,  faith
sickeners, not healers,  mind-blowers. Now, his own mind had been blown, so to speak.
Assume his observations were correct. What were the then-logical inferences?
The bubble-cops were, in that case, breathing portable air. Ergo, the outside air was
not breathable. It had been the thing that knocked him out as the car door opened.
Or, had it?
There d been no time for outside air to reach him. So, then, the air in his car had done
the job. Absurd! But what other explanation granting his present line and approach were of
any use?
He was on Interstate 15 and, he judged, near the Bar-stow bypass. When his senses
told him they d turned into it, he risked raising his head higher for seconds, only, and while
some impediment occupied the attention of die two in front a fall of bricks, he gathered.
Barstow wasn t much help. There were profiles of its downtown buildings, vague
stretches of houses, a glimpse of some sort of factory, but it was unsatisfactory.
There was a lot of dust in the air over the city, especially. There was a general haze
that blurred distance, even, in a half mile. The sun hit the hot land in freeform patches but it
looked weak, save for one or two brilliantly illuminated but undefined spots. The sky, which
he could glimpse from either side, was pretty cloudy, smoggy, maybe, and, even where the
overcast seemed minimal, not as blue as it ought to have been.
In short, wrong. Further, they he, anyhow hadn t seen one other vehicle or one
Irving person. Just those bones in that aged and useless freight car. Metal was rusted in every
place he d seen it, chrome flaked off bumpers, rails thick and orange-brown. As if, and his
heart skipped, the world were dead.
I am not superstitious.
He grinned when he realized he d insisted on that inner assertion about ten times.
What else to do?
Wait, he thought, and see.
In time, at least something happened. One of the two men up front talked into a mike.
 Patrol Six, now approaching Los Angeles, East Gate Entrance with captive.
(Captive!)
 Come in, Patrol Six! We are ready!
When the van stopped, at last, one man had put on his helmet and gear. He stepped
down and talked to another, out of Glenn s view. He caught a word or two but not enough to
make sense. The man jumped aboard again, the van moved ahead and, for a moment, Glenn
had a glimpse of a sort of enclosed guardpost and a large sign that read:
LOS ANGELES
EAST GATES AND LOCKS
2013
He couldn t make anything of that. The broad but hardly typical daylight went dark.
The vehicle had entered a tunnel. No other way to figure. It stopped. There was a sound of
heavy duty motors at work and of heavy objects moving slowly. A clang. Much hissing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]