I bought my ticket and took my place at the end of the queue outside the port police station. I’ll admit I was nervous; while I didn’t anticipate having any trouble getting my travel pass validated, the police officers who must handle it were no doubt on the lookout for John Lyle, renegade army officer. But they were always looking for someone and I hoped the list of wanted faces was too long to make the search for me anything other than routine.
The line moved slowly and that looked like a bad sign-especially so when I noticed that several people had been thumbed out of line and sent to wait behind the station railing. I got downright jittery. But the wait itself gave me time to get myself in hand. I shoved my papers at the sergeant, glanced at my chrono, up at the station clock, and back at my wrist.
The sergeant had been going through my papers in a leisurely, thorough manner. He looked up. ‘Don’t worry about catching your ship,’ he said not unkindly. ‘They can’t leave until we clear their passenger list.’ He pushed a pad across the counter. ‘Your fingerprints, please.’
I gave them without comment. 1-le compared them with the prints on my travel pass and then with the prints Reeves had left there on his arrival a week earlier. ‘That’s all, Mr. Reeves. A pleasant trip.’
I thanked him and left.
The Comet was not too crowded. I picked a seat by a window, well forward, and had just settled down and was unfolding a late-afternoon copy of the Holy City, when I felt a touch on my arm.
It was a policeman.
‘Will you step outside, please?’
I was herded outside with four other male passengers. The sergeant was quite decent about it. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you four to return to the station for further identification. I’ll order your baggage removed and have the passenger list changed. Your tickets will be honored on the next flight.’
I let out a yelp. ‘But I’ve got to be in Cincinnati tonight!’
‘I’m sorry.’ He turned to me. ‘You’re Reeves, aren’t you? Hmm . . . you are the right size and build. Still-let me see your pass again. Didn’t you arrive in town just last week?’
‘That’s right.’
He went through my papers again. ‘Uh, yes, I remember now; you came in Tuesday morning on the Pilgrim. Well, you can’t be in two places at once, so I guess that clears you.’ He handed my papers back to me. ‘Go aboard again. Sorry we bothered you. The rest of you come along.’
I returned to my seat and picked up my newspaper. A few minutes later the first heavy surge of the rockets threw us to the west. I continued reading the paper to cover up my agitation and relief, but soon got interested. I had been reading a Toronto paper only that morning, underground; the contrast was startling. I was back in a world for which the outside world hardly existed; the ‘foreign affairs’ news, if you could call it that, consisted of glowing reports of our foreign missions and some accounts of atrocities among the infidels. I began to wonder where all that money went that was contributed each year for missionary work; the rest of the world, if you could believe their newspapers, didn’t seem much aware that our missions existed.
Then I began going through the paper, picking out items that I knew to be false. By the time I was through we were down out of the ionosphere and gliding into Cincy. We had overtaken the sun and had sunset all over again.
There must be a peddler’s pack in my family tree. I not only covered Reeves’s territory in Cincinnati, but bettered his quota. I found that I got as much pleasure out of persuading some hard-boiled retailer that he should increase his line of yard goods as I ever had from military work. I stopped worrying about my disguise and thought only about textiles. Selling isn’t just a way to eat; it’s a game, it’s fun.
I left for Kansas City on schedule and had no trouble with the police in getting a visa for my travel pass. I decided that New Jerusalem had been the only ticklish check point; from here west nobody would expect to pick up John Lyle, formerly officer and gentleman; he would be one of thousands of wanted men, lost in the files.