Kickaha grinned and shouted, “Good show, Anana!” And then his grin fell off and he cursed. Around the corner of the road, now a half-mile away, a black and white car with red lights on top had appeared. Any hopes that he had that it would stop to investigate the accident quickly faded. The car swung to the shoulder to avoid the fallen vehicles and riders and then twisted back onto the road and took off after Kickaha, its siren whooping, its red lights flashing.
The car was about fifty yards away when Anana swept the ray down the road and across the front tires. She snapped the ray off so quickly that the wheels were probably only disintegrated a little on the rims, but the tires were cut in two. The car dropped a little but kept going on, though it decreased speed so suddenly that the two policemen were thrown violently forward. The siren died; the lights quit flashing; the car shook to a halt. And Kickaha and Anana sped around a curve and saw the policemen no more.
“If this keeps up, we’re going to be out of charges!” Kickaha said. “Hell, I wanted to save them for extreme emergencies! I didn’t think we’d be having so much trouble so soon! And we’ve just started!”
They continued for five miles and then he saw another police car coming toward them. It went down a dip and was lost for a minute. He shouted, “Hang on!” and swung off the road, bouncing across a slight depression toward a wide field that grew more rocks than grass. His goal was a clump of trees about a hundred yards away, and he almost made it before the police came into view. Anana, hanging on, yelled that the police car was coming across the field after them. Kickaha slowed the cycle. Anana ran the ray down the field in front of the advancing car. Burning dirt flew up in dust along a furrow and then the tires exploded and the front of the radiator of the car gushed water and steam.
Kickaha took the cycle back toward the road at an angle away from the car. Two policemen jumped out and, steadying their pistols, fired. The chances of hitting the riders or the machine at that distance were poor, but a bullet did penetrate the rear tire. There was a bang; the cycle began fishtailing. Kickaha cut the motor, and they coasted to a stop. The policemen began running toward them.
“Hell, I don’t want to kill them! “Kickaha said. “But. . .”
The policemen were big and blubbery-looking and looked as if they might be between forty and fifty years old. Kickaha and Anana were wearing packs of about thirty pounds, but both were physically about twenty-five years old.
“We’ll outrun them,” he said, and they fled together toward the road. The two men fired their guns and shouted but they were slowing down swiftly and soon they were trotting. A half-mile later, they were standing together watching the two dwindle.
Kickaha, grinning, circled back toward the car. He looked back once and saw that the two policemen realized that he had led them astray. They were running again but not too swiftly. Their legs and arms were pumping at first but soon the motions became less energetic, and then both were walking toward him.
Kickaha opened the door to the car, tore off the microphone of the transceiver, reached under the dashboard and tore loose all the wires connected to the radio. By that time, Anana had caught up with him. The keys were still in the ignition lock, and the wheels themselves had not been cut into deeply. He told Anana to jump in, and he got behind the driver’s wheel and started the motor. The cops speeded up then and began firing again, but the car pulled away from them and bumped and shook across the field, accelerating all the time. One bullet pierced and starred a rear window, and then the car was bumping down the road.
After two miles of the grinding noise and piston-like movement, Kickaha decided to call it quits. He drove the car to the side of the road, got out, threw the ignition keys into the weeds, and started to hike again. They had walked perhaps fifty yards when they turned at the noise of a vehicle. A bus shot by them. It was painted all over with swirls, dots, squares, circles, and explosions of many bright colors. In bright yellow and orange-trimmed letters was a title along the front and the sides of the bus: the gnome king and his bad eggs. Above the title were painted glowing red and yellow quarter notes, bars, small guitars and drums.