from the thing in Hodgson’s suit.
If, in fact, we had been more than two years in the past, if we were now
racing forward to the April night on which we had begun this bizarre
adventure, I thought I ought to have felt some change within myselfa
singing in my bones, a fever from the friction of the frantically
passing hours, a sense of growing back to my real age, something.
But a descent on a slow elevator would have had a greater physical
effect than this express ride along the rails of time.
On my wristwatch, the month suddenly stopped at Apr. A second later, the
day and date froze, and immediately thereafter, the time display
registered a clear, steady 3,58 A. M. We were home, minus Toto.
“Cool, ” Bobby said.
“Sweet, ” I agreed.
The big question was whether we had a fellow traveler with us, a
wormy-faced companion in a pressure suit, like nothing Auntie Em or
anyone else in Kansas had ever seen.
Logic argued that the Hodgson thing was lost in the past.
It might be delusional, however, to assume that logic applied within
this singular situation.
I withdrew the flashlight from under my belt.
Didn’t want to switch it on.
Switched it on.
The Hodgson thing wasn’t face-to-face with me, as I had feared.
A quick sweep of the light revealed that Bobby and I were alone at least
in that portion of the egg room into which the flashlight beam would
reach.
The vault door was gone. I couldn’t see it either when I looked directly
at the exit tunnel or when I relied on my peripheral vision.
Apparently, the room had become so sensitized to light that once again,
generated by the single beam, faint luminous whorls began to pulse and
wheel in the floor, walls, and ceiling.
I immediately switched off the flashlight and jammed it under my belt.
“Go, ” I urged.
“Going.” As darkness descended once more, I heard Bobby scrambling over
the raised threshold, feeling his way forward through the short,
five-foot-high tunnel.
“Clear, ” he said.
Crouching, I followed him into what had once been the airlock.
I didn’t turn on the flashlight again until we were out of the airlock
and in the corridor, where not one stray beam could find its way back to
the glassy material that lined the egg room.
“Told you it would fade, ” Bobby said.
“Why do I ever doubt you? ” Neither of us spoke another word all the way
up through the three stripped subterranean floors of the facility,
through the hangar, to the Jeep, which stood under a sky from which
clotting clouds had purged all stars.
We drove southwest across Fort Wyvern, through Dead Town, past the
warehouses where I had confronted the kidnapper, switching off the
headlights as we reached the Santa Rosita, down the access ramp along
the levee wall, onto the dry riverbed, obeying not a single stop sign
along the way, ignoring every posted speed limit, with a loaded shotgun
in a moving vehicle, a concealed weapon in my shoulder holster even
though I possessed no license to carry, a cooler of beer between my
feet, trespassing in flagrant violation of the federal government’s
Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act, while holding numerous
politically incorrect attitudes, of which a few might well be against
the law. We were two Clydes without a Bonnie.
Bobby had so expanded the gap in the river-spanning fence that we drove
through with room to spare. He parked immediately outside the grounds of
the military base, and together we got out of the Jeep and lowered the
flaps of chain-link, which he had rolled up and hooked to the top of the
fence.
A close inspection would reveal the breach. From a distance greater than
fifteen feet, however, the violation of the fence could not be seen.
We didn’t want to announce that we had trespassed. Without doubt we
would soon be returning by this same route, and we would need easy
access.
The tire tracks leading through the fence betrayed us, but there wasn’t
a way to erase them quickly and effectively. We had to hope that the