18

Station Run

Agent Hessman led the way onto the landing before them, picking a walkway off to their left.

“Just keep it casual,” he cautioned. “They might not have spotted us yet. No reason to call attention to ourselves.”

They started walking, though Claire’s way of not calling attention to herself was to eagerly point at one sight or another and pull Ben along with her—basically, acting just like any other tourist. The walkway led them around the outer edge; to their right, a long window with a view of space that she could not help but pause to gape before.

“We’re standing on infinity,” she gasped. “Oh, Ben.”

“I’ll admit, I could stand here for hours just looking at it,” Ben agreed.

Agent Hessman cut in: “I rather think we have a much shorter time than that. Our pursuers appear to have spotted us.”

A glance across the foyer showed the two uniformed men riding up one of the glass elevators at the far side.

“We’ve got to run!” Claire gasped.

She already had her hand on her hat to hold it down and run, but Agent Hessman held her back.

“Quick walk, no running,” he advised. “We don’t want to stir up the locals, and I don’t think they do either. It’s their turf, and they know this is a closed environment with only so many places we can run to.”

“Then what do we do?” Ben asked.

“We find a new place to run to. Follow me.”

They quickened their pace, weaving through the crowd. A glance back showed that the two uniforms were just getting off their elevator on the same level as themselves and starting into the same quick walk. Agent Hessman led them left onto a crossing over a four-story drop to another landing. Pausing midway across one of the glass elevator tubes, he pressed a button before a clear door. Moments later the elevator came up and the doors slid aside. The uniforms were a couple hundred feet away when the doors closed behind them.

The inside had a panel like any elevator of their own day, with numbered buttons and a couple of service buttons on the bottom row. Lou immediately hit the highest-numbered button he could see. The two uniforms were still threading their way through the crowd when the elevator shot up out of sight.

They had a brief aerial view of the whole section when they shot up through the ceiling and up to the next level. In this brief interval between floors decorated with images of clouds projected all around them, they caught a fleeting glimpse of a level that looked like a glamorous food court done by way of Rodeo Drive, before they were gone again into the clouds and another level came into view. Here Agent Hessman slammed a hand onto a button marked with a large X. The elevator immediately came to a stop and eased down level with the floor.

“Everyone out,” he ordered.

The last one out, Agent Hessman hit a random selection of buttons, then slipped out before the doors closed shut and the elevator zoomed away.

“Old trick,” he stated. “Now just start walking.”

This section had a large open floor across which people came and went as they looked over the selections that circled them. It looked like a ring of high-class restaurants. On the left was one labeled “NY, NY” with projected images of the Statue of Liberty and other local landmarks of note, with a miniature reproduction of the Brooklyn Bridge sized perfectly for two people to walk across over a pretend river. A hundred feet past that one was a place with an underwater theme named Atlantis, followed by Hard Rock Café fifty feet later on the far side. Completing the other half of the circle was The Fifth Season, Gordon’s Grill, and The Player. Off to their right, a wide hall curved farther around the perimeter, with a holographic sign flashing “Rail.”

“Expensive eats,” Claire remarked.

“We’re not staying to eat,” Agent Hessman replied. “The rail.”

They hurried over to the hall on the right, stepping quickly along the carpeted floor until the curvature brought them out of sight of the restaurants and into view of what looked like a transit-pod station like back at Heathrow. There was a short line of people waiting as one long pod would speed into view from out of a tunnel in the left-hand wall, then pause to deposit its passengers and admit new ones before whizzing off through the wall to the right.

“I have no doubt that they can track our temporal signatures better than we can track Samantha,” Agent Hessman said as they fell into line, “so this will be challenging.”

“More so since we have neither their Net links nor any of their money,” Ben observed. “Just these transport cards.”

“If I’m right, that should be enough. If this is like our Las Vegas, they’re going to be comping a lot of stuff to keep people moving toward the casinos and shows.”

Their turn in line came up as the next pod slid into place to deposit its travelers. The gate opened before them, no card or money needed.

“Such as free transportation?” Ben ventured.

Once inside the pod, a map was projected in the air before them, with one dot to indicate their current location. Captain Beck pressed a finger uncertainly into the air, stabbing at a point away from the outer perimeter. Immediately the pod started moving. A swift flight through the wall and across what the holograms would have them believe to be soaring mountain heights was followed by a dive down into a deep rocky core.

“Even the cabs around this place are entertaining,” Ben remarked with a grin.

“If you like motion sickness,” Captain Beck replied.

“I think it’s wonderful!” Claire exclaimed. “I feel like an eagle.”

Agent Hessman, meanwhile, was back to looking at his tracker. “Still not close enough,” he stated, “though this tube is a good way to cover a lot of ground quickly. If I call out, someone make note of where the map says we are, and get this thing to stop.”

“Sure,” Ben uncertainly replied, “just as soon as I figure out how to work this thing.”

They made one last pass through what the holograms made them believe to be a watery canal before emerging into another rail station similar to the first. This time they stepped out into the middle of what looked like a circus and an arcade mall, with performers leaping through the air in their wire acrobatics, mechanical elephants giving rides to young kids, game booths strewn about a busy promenade, and of course the obligatory scantily clad young women there to direct people to the various activities.

“It’s just like Steeplechase!” Claire gasped.

“Only a few stories taller,” Captain Beck noted.

“Ooh,” Claire began, “can we—”

“No rides,” Ben said.

“Actually, a ride may be just what we need,” Agent Hessman stated.

They glanced through the crowd to where he’d indicated with a nod of his head. Across the open arcade of game booths, rides, and entertainment, with its crowd of thousands, they spied two men in certain specific uniforms.

“How’d they even find us, much less make it up here before us?” Ben wondered.

“Multiple teams,” Agent Hessman answered. “But what I find more interesting is that roller-coaster ride over there.”

He led a hurried pace through the crowd to where a short line had formed for a multistory roller-coaster ride themed after rocket ships flying through an asteroid field. To the head of the line they hurried, with Agent Hessman making an odd remark to Claire: “Miss Hill, your hat needs adjusting.”

“What? Oh, thank you.”

As they approached the ride entrance, Claire made a small fuss of adjusting her large white sun hat while Agent Hessman glanced toward the pair of time cops. It didn’t take much for them to notice Claire adjusting the wide brim into place.

“There, that looks better,” she said.

“Good, they spotted us,” Agent Hessman said.

“That’s good?” Ben asked.

There was a young man controlling entry into the ride, and it was to him that Agent Hessman led the others while the time cops maneuvered as quickly as they could through the masses.

“Excuse me,” Agent Hessman quickly addressed the young man, “but where is the chicken exit?”

“Just up ahead, but you aren’t even in line yet, why would you—”

“Thank you.”

Brushing past the young man, all four hurried for the indicated exit, but not before Agent Hessman grabbed the hat off Claire’s head.

“Hey, my hat!”

Not bothering to reply, he slapped the large white hat on top of the nearest young woman about to board the ride.

“Present from Claire Hill, cross-temporal reporter,” he told the woman.

Leaving a happy young woman behind them, Agent Hessman led them in a jog for the exit door and then a quick run down the hallway beyond.

“Distraction, Miss Hill—we needed one.”

“I figured that,” she replied, “but you could have at least let me get my things out of it first.”

“Your things?”

“Like I said before we left, a lady knows how to keep things under her hat.”

“You mean you meant that literally?” Ben grinned.

“Why do you think I wore such a large hat? Small vial of chloroform, stun gun, hairpin—you’d be surprised how many things those are good for.”

“Around you, Miss Hill, never.”

After fifty feet the long metal corridor afforded a glass-walled view along their right of the shoot along which the coaster pods would streak as they shot into the main part of the ride. There they were able to see one pod go racing by sporting a happy young lady holding a large white hat tightly against her chest. The car after that held a pair of agents in uniform trying to keep an eye on the ones ahead of them.

That’s when Claire stopped and rapped a few times hard against the glass wall, waving one hand in the air while smiling down at the two agents. In the brief time they had as their pod passed by below, they looked up to see Claire in her pink-and-white dress, sans hat, and some familiar faces alongside her.

“Sorry you missed us,” she called out.

As the two annoyed-looking men were sped away into the bowels of the ride, Agent Hessman pulled them away into a fast run down the empty corridor.

“No need to worry about crowds right now. Come on.”

It wasn’t long to the other end, but as they ran, they began to notice something odd. Their steps were getting lighter and longer.

“I know I’ve been trying to lose weight,” Captain Beck remarked, “but this is ridiculous. I thought this place had artificial gravity.”

“Produced by the spin of the station,” Ben explained, “which means the closer we get to the central core—”

“The lighter we get,” Agent Hessman completed. “That just might work for us.”

They exited into another open foyer, though smaller than the first. This one had the usual array of walkways crossing by above and below, but there were also some people who opted instead for swimming through the air direct to their destination, a few of them with little personal jets on a belt that blasted out puffs of air to guide them. These jet belts were available at a concession stand across the foyer.

“We going to try getting a set of those jet belts to play around with?” Ben asked.

“No money,” came Agent Hessman’s reply. “Just jump.”

“What?” a shocked Claire asked.

“We’re close to zero gravity around here. Just hold on to one another.”

Grabbing Claire’s hand, Agent Hessman leaped just as she in turn quickly grabbed Ben’s hand, then he Captain Beck’s, forming a snake of four people, slipping through the air over the open foyer. Fear quickly turned to glee as Claire let out a whoop of delight, though Captain Beck was significantly less thrilled. There was nothing but open air below them; to their far left, an immense picture-window view of Earth; to their right, the foyer opened up to a large multilevel shopping gallery well over a thousand feet across. The foyer was only a hundred or so feet across and rounded to contain the merrymakers except at the one end that widened into the shopping gallery beyond.

Below them another pair of time cops were running for the concession booth with the jet belts.

“This is exhilarating,” Claire declared.

“I feel like a bird,” Ben echoed.

“I feel sick,” Captain Beck added.

“We don’t have much control, so try not to tumble,” Agent Hessman called back. “And whatever you do, don’t let go.”

Their flight was a slow drift across and up to whatever destination Agent Hessman had aimed them, while below them the pair of time cops were strapping on their belts and leaping into the air to give chase. Between the two groups couples tumbled gaily about, families and their young ones laughed as they pretended to be birds.

They were midway across when they heard one of the time cops calling up from below as they neared.

“Stop! You’re out of time.”

Even Agent Hessman would have smirked had he not been focused on their course.

“They really should have thought their way through that line,” Ben said, grinning. “I know what they mean, but . . .”

“Get ready for impact,” Agent Hessman called back.

The impact came against the far wall, but not just any random part of it. At their approach, Agent Hessman carefully reached out his free hand and grabbed on to a large ventilation grill, one locked into place by a simple latch, which he now proceeded to twist open. It covered a duct easily large enough for them each to swim through.

Which a moment later they did, though with the cry of the time cops close behind them.

“Stop! You need to go back!”

The duct was some ten feet across and fell into an endless well that had Claire’s grip on Ben tightening considerably. They hovered there for a moment before Agent Hessman slammed his feet against the other side, bent his knees, then launched himself downward. As each in turn hit the wall, they repeated the maneuver, all while trying to keep their grips on one another. Down they dropped, everyone but Agent Hessman apparently afraid that gravity might at any second retake control. Above them the two agents came into view, but they had their jet belts to aid them.

“We’re gonna get swallowed,” Claire said with a hard gulp. “I don’t mind admitting I’m really afraid right now.”

“You aren’t the only one,” Ben agreed. “Uh, Lou, those guys are going to catch up any second. You have anything specific in mind?”

“Not particularly,” he admitted, “just that whatever’s down in that direction, the tracker in my pocket is vibrating like crazy. Samantha’s down there, so we’re not stopping.”

“Okay, I can see that,” Ben said, “but, uh, they don’t seem to be stopping either.”

Down the nearly gravity-free shaft they fell, above them a pair of time cops closing in fast with pistols in hand, below them little more than a dimly lit pit.