To The Stars

Big. At times Jan still found it hard to believe that a power plant this size could actually move. And power plants they were for all of the time they were off the Road. Jacked up and stationary, their atomic generators producing all the electricity the city and farms could possibly need, waiting patiently for their transformation back into the engines they really were.

Big. Ten times bigger than the biggest truck Jan had ever seen before coming to this planet. He slapped the tire of one as he passed, solid and hard, the top of the tread so high above his head that he could not reach it. Lug nuts the size of dinner plates. Two steerable wheels before, four driving wheels in back. Behind the front wheels were the rungs up to the driving compartment. Fifteen of them, climbing up the burnished golden metal of the solidly riveted side of the beast. In front the battery of headlights, bright enough to blind a man in an instant, if he were fool enough to stand and look at them. There was a glitter of glass from the drivers’ compartment, high above. Out of sight on top were the banked rows of tubes and fins that cooled the atomic engines. Engines large enough to light a small city. He couldn’t resist slamming his hand against the hard metal as he passed. It was something to drive one of these.

Ivan Semenov was waiting by the lead train.

“Will you drive engine one?” he asked.

“That’s your job, Ivan, the most responsible one. The Trainmaster sits in that seat.”

Ivan’s grin was a little twisted. “Whatever titles are given, Jan, I think we know who is Trainmaster on this trip. People are talking. Now that the work has been done, they think you were right. They know who is in charge here. And Hem has few friends. He lies in bed and rubs the cast on his arm and will talk to no one. People pass his car and laugh”

“I’m sorry I did that. But I still think it was the only way.

“Perhaps you are right. In any case they all know who is in charge. Take engine one.

He turned on his heel and walked away before Jan could answer.

Engine one. It was a responsibility that he could handle. But there was an excitement there as well. Not only to drive one of these great brutes — but to drive the very first. Jan had to smile at himself as he walked faster and faster down the lengths of the trains, to the first train. To the first engine.

The thick door to the engine compartment was open and he saw the engineer bent over the lubrication controls. “Stow this, will you,” he said as he slung his bag in through the doorway. Without waiting for an answer he grabbed the rungs and pulled himself up onto the first. To his left was the empty Road surrounded by the barren farms, more and more of the Road appearing as he climbed higher. Behind him the dual row of trains, solid and waiting. He pulled himself through the hatch into the driving compartment. The co-driver was in his seat leafing through his checklists. In the adjoining compartment the communications officer was at his banked radios.

In front, the expanse of the armored glass window, a bank of TV screens above it. Below this, row after row of instruments and gauges that fed back information on the engine and the train it towed, and the trains behind that.

In front of the controls the single, empty chair, solid steel with padded seat, back and headrest. Before it the wheel and the controls. Jan slid slowly into it, feeling its strength against his back, letting his feet rest lightly on the pedals, reaching out and taking the cool form of the wheel in his hand.

“Start the checklist,” he said. “Ready to roll.”

Five

Hour after frustrating hour passed. Although the trains appeared to be joined up and ready to begin the trek, there were still hundreds of minor problems that had to be solved before the starting signal could be given. Jan grew hoarse and frustrated shouting into the radiophone, until he finally slammed the headset back into the rack and went to see for himself. Fitted into a niche at the rear of the engine was a knobby-tired motorcycle. He unclamped it and disconnected the power lead to the battery — then found both tires fiat. Whoever should have checked it hadn’t. There was more delay while the engineer, Emo, filled a compressed air cylinder. When he finally mounted the cycle, Jan had the pleasure of twisting the rheostat on full and hearing the tires shriek as they spun against the road surface and hurled him forward.