The Wanderer

Without waiting for any even slightly delayed answers, he took a stand on the slope just above the boulder and motioned Margo to come up.

“I saw the boulder rock,” he explained, “when you slammed that gunman against it. Give it three seconds of down-trigger from here and I bet she rolls. Spread out of the way, everybody!”

Margo took the momentum pistol from her jacket, then suddenly turned and gave it to Hunter.

“You do it,” she told him, delighted to realize that she no longer needed the big gun to give her a feeling of security and excitement — that, in very fact, she herself was now the big gun she could rely on and experiment with. She also noted with satisfaction the sour hungry look in Hunter’s dark-circled eyes.

He crouched and firmed the gun in both hands. He’d been told it had absolutely no recoil, but his body refused to believe that. All his muscles tightened. From the corner of his eye he saw Doc wave. He pressed the button.

Whatever field or force the pistol generated, its effect was cumulative, as if the boulder had to soak it up. At first the great rounded rock didn’t move at all — long enough for Hixon to say: “Look, it isn’t—”

Then the side nearest Hunter began to lift, slowly at first, then faster. McHeath cried: “It’s moving!”

It overbalanced. Hunter snatched his finger off the button. The boulder came down on the rock slope with a tremendous clank, then crashed over and over, seeming at first to move just a little faster than a rolling boulder should.

The whole rock slope shook. Some of the people clutched at those nearest them.

A final crash carried the monster over the edge, from which it took a wide shallow bite of stone.

The Little Man said loudly, pulling out his notebook: “That is the most amazing demonstration of impossible physics that I have ever—”

A great sullen thud drowned his voice. The rock slope vibrated again as the boulder hit below.

Hunter looked at the scale on the pistol and said, “Still a good third of the charge left.”

Doc studied the spot where the boulder had rested. There was a smooth two-foot dip in the asphaltoid, deepest on the downslope side where the black stuff was squeezed out in a lip that smoothly joined the rock. Abruptly Doc nodded approvingly.

“I’m not so sure,” Hunter said, coming down the slope. “A skid sideways—”

But Doc was already striding back toward the red Corvette.

Two of the three buzzards — presumably they were the same — came winging up from the depths, heading away from the road. But there they ran into a big, two-rotor military ’copter which had come droning from the direction of the Valley during the excitement. The birds veered off from it and headed back.

Hixon was for signaling the ’copter with his gun, but Doc said: “No, we’ll take care of ourselves. Anyhow, they can see us, and if that boulder didn’t fetch ’em, nothing would.”

The ’copter sped off seaward.

Doc climbed in the red Corvette, yelled: “Clear the road!” and drove it across the dip with only a small sideways lurch, just as the two buzzards winged rapidly across the road, hardly fifty feet up, and disappeared over the ridge.

Doc stopped the Corvette just beyond the sedan. “Clear everyone out of the bus and bring her across!” he shouted back. Then to Hunter, Margo, and Rama Joan, who’d come after him: “I’ll lead off in the Corvette. Then the order’ll be: sedan, bus, truck. You come with me, Joan, but Ann had better ride in the bus. You drive the sedan, Ross. Better get her turned around now. Margo, you keep the momentum pistol and ride with him. You’re our heavy artillery, if we get into trouble, but wait for orders from me. Doddsy, we ought to have a rear-guard rifle in the back of the truck, but your hand’s still bad.”

“Harry McHeath knows how to use the gun,” the Little Man said, “and he’s responsible.”

Doc nodded. “Go tell him he’s promoted,” he said. “Hixon can keep the other rifle.”

The driver, Pop, came up to demur at taking the bus across the dip. “Back tires are old,” he explained. “Worn slick. She’ll be apt to take a sideways slip when she drops into that hole…”

Doc was already striding back. He climbed aboard the bus and brought her across without a great deal more sideways lurch than the Corvette.

Hixon brought the truck over. Ray Hanks was carried across then in his cot and, at his feverish insistence, loaded once more into the back of the truck, rather than the bus. He was joined there by Ida and young McHeath, stern-faced with his rifle.

As the bus loaded up, Doc said to Clarence Dodd: “You command her — and ride herd on Pop.”

Walking ahead to the Corvette, he found Ann sitting in the middle of the front seat beside her mother. He planted his fists on his hips, then grinned and shrugged and climbed behind the wheel. “Hi, sweetheart,” he said, tousling her hair. She shrank away from him toward her mother, just a little.

Doc started the motor, then stood up and faced back.