Helena, weeping with excitement, tugged at his leg. “Vote now, Ross,” she begged, and all over the hall the cry was “Vote! Vote!”
Ross reached out for the voting buttons. “What do we do now?” he asked Helena.
“Push the button marked ‘Appleby,’ of course. Hurry!”
“But why Appleby?” Ross objected. “That fellow Flexner, for instance——”
“Hush, Ross! Somebody might be listening.” There was sickening fright on Helena’s face. “Didn’t you hear? We have to vote for the best man. ‘Oldest Is Bestest,’ you know. That’s what Democracy means, the freedom of choice. They read us the ages, and we choose which is oldest. Now please, Ross, hurry before somebody starts asking questions!”
The voting was over, and the best man had won in every case. It was a triumph for informed public opinion. The mob poured out of the hall in happy-go-lucky order, all precedences and formalities suspended for Holiday.
Helena grasped Ross firmly by the arm. The crowd was spreading over the quiet acres surrounding the Center, each little cluster heedlessly intent on a long-planned project of its own. Under the pressure of Helena’s arm, Ross found himself swerving toward a clump of shrubbery.
He said violently, “No! That is, I mean I’m sorry, Helena, but I’ve got something to do.”
She stared at him with shock hi her eyes. “On Holiday?”
“On Holiday. Truly, Helena, I’m sorry. Look, what you said last night—from now till tomorrow morning, I can do what I want, right?”
Sullenly, “Yes. I thought, Ross, that I knew what——”
“Okay.” He jerked his arm away, feeling like all of the hundred possible kinds of a skunk. “See you around,” he said over his shoulder. He did not look back.
Three kilos back, he told himself firmly, then the right-hand fork in the road. And not more than a dozen kilos, at the most, to the spaceport. He could do it hi a couple of hours.
One thing had been established for certain: If ever there had been a “Franklin Foundation” on this planet, it was gone for good now. Dismantled, no doubt, to provide building materials for an eartrumpet plant. No doubt the little F-T-L ship that the Franklin Foundation was supposed to cover for was still swinging in an orbit within easy range of the spaceport; but the chance that anybody
would ever find it, or use it if found, was pretty close to zero. If they bothered to maintain a radar watch at all—any other watch than the fully automatic one set to respond only to highvelocity interstellar ships—and if anyone ever took time to look at the radar plot, no doubt the F-T-L ship was charted. As an asteroid, satellite, derelict or “body of unknown origin.” Certainly no one of these smug oldsters would take the trouble to investigate.
The only problem to solve on this planet was how to get off it—fast.
On the road ahead of him was what appeared to be a combination sex orgy and free-for-all. It rolled in a yelling, milling mob of half a hundred excited juniors across the road toward him, then swerved into the fields as a cluster of screaming women broke free and ran, and the rest of the crowd roared after them.
Ross quickened his step. If he ever did get off this planet, it would have to be today; he was not fool enough to think that any ordinary day would give him the freedom to poke around the spaceport’s defenses. And it would be just his luck, he thought bitterly, to get involved in a gang fight on the way to the port.
There was a squeal of tires behind him, and a little vehicle screeched to a halt. Ross threw up a defensive arm in automatic reflex.
But it was only Helena, awkwardly fumbling open the door of the car. “Get in,” she said sourly. “You’ve spoiled my Holiday. Might as well do what you want to do.”
“What’s that?”
Helena looked where he was pointing, and shrugged. “Guard box,” she guessed. “How would I know? Nobody’s in it, anyhow.”
Ross nodded. They had abandoned the car and were standing outside a long, seamless fence that surrounded the spaceport. The main gates were closed and locked; a few hundred feet to the right was a smaller gate with a sort of pillbox, but that had every appearance of being locked too.