But he could not afford the luxury of speaking his mind. He strove to get just the proper tone into his voice which would soothe the other man’s vanity. “I’ve got to admit that you’ve won this trick, Van – the roadway is stopped – but don’t think I didn’t take you seriously. I’ve watched your work too long to underrate you. I know you mean what you say.”
Van Kleeck was pleased by the tribute, but tried not to show it. “Then why don’t you get smart, and give up?” he demanded belligerently. “You can’t win.”
“Maybe not, Van, but you know I’ve got to try. Besides,” he went on, “why can’t I win? You said yourself that I could call on the whole United States Army.”
Van Kleeck grinned triumphantly. “You see that?” He held up a pear-shaped electric push button, attached to a long cord. “If I push that, it will blow a path right straight across the ways-blow it to Kingdom Come. And just for good measure I’ll take an ax, and wreck this control station before I leave.”
Gaines wished wholeheartedly that he knew more about psychiatry. Well – he’d just have to do his best, and trust to horse sense to give him the right answers. “That’s pretty drastic, Van, but I don’t see how we can give up.”
“No? You’d better have another think. If you force me to blow up the road, how about all the people that will be blown up along with it?”
Gaines thought furiously. He did not doubt that Van Kleeck would carry out his threat; his very phraseology, the childish petulance of “If you force me to do this-” betrayed the dangerous irrationality of his mental processes. And such an explosion anywhere in the thickly populated Sacramento Sector would be likely to wreck one, or more, apartment houses, and would be certain to kill shopkeepers on the included segment of strip twenty, as well as chance bystanders. Van was absolutely right; he dare not risk the lives of bystanders who were not aware of the issue and had not consented to the hazard – even if the road never rolled again.
For that matter, he did not relish chancing major damage to the road itself-but it was the danger to innocent life that left him helpless.
A tune ran through his head-“Hear them hum; watch them run. Oh, our work is never done-” What to do? What to do? “While you ride; while you glide; we are-”
This wasn’t getting anyplace.
He turned back to the screen. “Look, Van, you don’t want to blow up the road unless you have to, I’m sure. Neither do I. Suppose I come up to your headquarters, and we talk this thing over. Two reasonable men ought to be able to make a settlement.”
Van Kleeck was suspicious. “Is this some sort of a trick?”
“How can it be? I’ll come alone, and unarmed, just as fast as my car can get there.”
“How about your men?”
“They will sit where they are until I’m back. You can put out observers to make sure of it.”
Van Kleeck stalled for a moment, caught between the fear of a trap, and the pleasure of having his erstwhile superior come to him to sue for terms. At last he grudgingly consented.
Gaines left his instructions and told Davidson what he intended to do. “If I’m not back within an hour, you’re on your own, Dave.”
“Be careful, Chief.”
“I will.”
He evicted the cadet driver from the reconnaissance car and ran it down the ramp into the causeway, then headed north and gave it the gun. Now he would have a chance to collect his thoughts, even at two hundred miles per hour. Suppose he pulled off this trick-there would still have to be some changes made. Two lessons stood out like sore thumbs: First, the strips must be cross-connected with safety interlocks so that adjacent strips would slow down, or stop, if a strip’s speed became dangerously different from those adjacent. No repetition of what happened on twenty!
But that was elementary, a mere mechanical detail. The real failure had been in men, Well, the psychological classification tests must be improved to insure that the roads employed only conscientious, reliable men. But hell’s bells – that was just exactly what the present classification tests were supposed to insure beyond question. To the best of his knowledge there had never been a failure from the improved Hunim-Wadsworth-Burton method – not until today in the Sacramento Sector. How had Van Kleeck gotten one whole sector of temperament – classified men to revolt?