The Wanderer

“We can’t even be sure they’re really gone,” Wojtowicz said with a nervous guffaw. “They might of just jumped to the other side of the earth.”

“That’s true,” the Little Man said, “but we didn’t see them even start to move…they just vanished. And I’ve got a feeling…”

Only then, as the bright yellow and orange afterimages faded from their retinas, did the saucer students begin to realize, one by one, that they were all standing quite still in inky darkness. Hunter had switched off the Corvette’s ignition. Behind him he heard the truck’s motor die. By twos and threes the stars began to wink on in the black heavens — the old familiar stars that the slate sky had masked for three nights.

Don and Paul gazed up through the spacescreen of the Baba Yaga at the empty starflelds and the blue and violet laser beams straight-lining off toward infinity.

They were both strapped down. Paul held a reddened handkerchief to his cheek. Don kept an eye on the skin temperature gauge and on the green-glowing aft radar picture of Southern California and the Pacific below. Although all but a trace of Earth’s atmosphere was still under them, he’d already braked once, mostly to assure himself that the main jet would fire.

“Well, they’re gone,” Don said.

“Into the storm,” Paul finished the thought “The Wanderer was a wreck.”

“Nothing’s a wreck that can boost into hyperspace,” Don assured him quite cheerily. The stars began to crawl across the screen, and he tripped a vernier or two and they steadied.

“Maybe the Wanderer will drift to another cosmos,” Paul muttered thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s the way: don’t try to force it, just drift like a wrecked ship with the hyperspatial currents, surrender to the storm.”

Don glanced at him sharply. “She told you quite a bit, didn’t she? I wonder if she got back aboard in time.”

“Of course,” Paul said shortly. “I think even those little ships can move as fast as light, or faster.”

“That was quite a clawing she gave you,” Don remarked casually, then rapidly added: “Me, I didn’t have any big romances up there.” He rippled the verniers again and frowned at the skin temperature gauge. He continued briskly: “And I don’t think I got any left down below, either. Margo’s really serious about this Hunter character, I’d say.”

Paul shrugged. “What do you care? You always liked loneliness better than you liked people. No offense — liking yourself s the beginning of all love.”

Again Don gave him a quick glance. “I bet you loved Margo more than I did,” he said. “I think I always knew that.”

“Of course I did,” Paul said dully. “She’ll be angry I lost Miaow.”

Don chuckled. “What things that cat’ll see.” Then his voice changed. “You wanted to go with Tigerishka, too, didn’t you? You stayed behind to ask her.”

Paul nodded. “And she wouldn’t have me on any terms. When I asked her what she felt toward me, she gave me this.” He hugged his cheek against the bloody rag.

Don chuckled. “You’re a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?” Then, quite lightly: “I don’t know, Paul, but if I were in love with a cat-lady, that clawing would be the one thing that would convince me she did love me back. Grab hold of the barrel now — here we go over Niagara Falls.”

The saucer students stood in inky darkness roofed with stars. Then, so near at hand it seemed for a moment they were in a room, a small low light went on, showing a cluttered table and behind it a man with the ageless, thin, sharp-featured face of a pharaoh. Margo moved toward him, following the young man in the sweatshirt, and Hunter got out of the car and came up after her.

The man behind the table looked to one side. Someone there said: “The magnetic fields of both planets are gone, Oppie. We’re back to Earth-normal.”

Margo said loudly: “Professor Opperly, we’ve been hunting you for two days. I have here a gun that dropped from a saucer. It puts momentum in things. We thought you should be entrusted with it. Unfortunately we’ve used up all its charge, getting here.”

He glanced quickly into her face, then down at the gray pistol she had taken from her jacket. His lips thinned in a small, quite nasty smile.

“It looks to me a great deal more like something from a dime store toy counter,” he told her briskly. Then, turning again to the man beside him: “How about the radio sky, Denison? Is it clearing, or—”

Margo had quickly turned the arrow on top of the gun away from the muzzle, then pointed it across the table and pressed the trigger button. Both Opperly and the young man in the sweatshirt started to grab her, then stopped. Some papers drifted toward the gun and then along with them three paper clips and a metal pencil that had been holding some of the papers down. For a second they all clung to the gun’s muzzle, then dropped off.

“It must be electrostatic,” the young man in the sweatshirt said curiously, watching the papers as they fluttered down.

“It works on metal objects, too,” the one addressed as Denison pointed out, seeing the paper clips as they fell. “Induction?”