CHAPTER TWO: A Line of Boiling Dust

The city inside the perimeter of raw earth was wavery and unreal. It did not hum any more, but it gave a puzzling impression of being slightly in shadow, though the July sun was still blazing over it. Even in his grief and anger, Chris was curious enough to wonder at the effect, and finally he thought he saw what caused it: The heat waves climbing the air around the town seemed to be detouring it, as though the city itself were inside a dome. No, not a dome, but a bubble, only a part of which was underground; it met the earth precisely at the cleared perimeter.

The spindizzy field was up. It was invisible in itself, but it was no longer admitting-the air of the Earth.

Scranton was ready.

Thanks to the scrapping, the patrol was far behind schedule; the leader drove them all through the scabrous, deserted suburbs without any mercy for his own torn leg. Chris grimly enjoyed watching him wince at every other step, but the man did not allow the wound to hold him up, nor did he let any of the lesser bruises and black eyes in the party serve as excuses for foot dragging.

There was no way to tell, by the normal human senses, when the party passed through the spindizzy screen. Midway across the perimeter, which was a good five hundred feet wide, the leader unshipped from his belt a device about as big as an avocado, turned it in his hands until it whined urgently, and then directed the group on ahead of him in single file, along a line which he traced in the dry red ground with the toe of his boot.

As his two guards left his side, Chris crouched instinctively. He was not afraid of them, and the leader apparently was going to stay behind. But the big man saw the slight motion.

"Red, I wouldn't if I were you," he said quietly. "If you try to run back this way after I turn off this gadget-or if you try to go around me-you'll go straight up in the air. Look back and see the dust rising. You're a lot heavier than a dust speck, and you'll go up a lot farther. Better relax. Take it from me."

Chris looked again at the dubious boundary line he had just crossed. Sure enough, there was a hair-thin ruling there, curving away to both sides as far as he could see, where the inert friable earth seemed to be turning over restlessly. It was as though he were standing inside a huge circle of boiling dust.

"That's right, that's what I meant. Now look here." The press-gang leader bent and picked up a stone just about as big as his fist-which was extraordinarily big-and shied it back the way they had come. As the rock started to cross the line above the seething dust, it leaped skyward with an audible screech, like a bullet ricocheting. In less than a second, Chris had lost sight of it.

"Fast, huh? And it'd throw you much farther, Red. In a few minutes, it'll be lifting a whole city. So don't go by how things look. Right where you stand, you're not even on the Earth any more."

Chris looked at the mountains for a moment, and then back' at the line of boiling dust. Then he turned away and resumed marching toward Scranton.

And yet they were now-On a street Chris had traveled a score of times before, carrying fifty cents for the Sunday paper's Help Wanted ads, or rolling, a wheel-barrow not quite full of rusty scrap, or bringing back a flat package of low-grade ground horsemeat. The difference lay only in the fact that just beyond the familiar corner the city stopped, giving place to the new desert of the perimeter-and all in the overarching shadow which was not a, shadow at all.

The patrol leader stopped and looked back. "We'll never make it from here," he said finally. "Take cover. Barney, watch that red-neck. I'll take the kid with me; he looks sensible."

Barney started to answer, but his reply was drowned out by a prolonged fifty-decibel honking which made the very walls howl back. The noise was horrifying; Chris had never before heard anything even a fraction so loud, and it seemed to go on forever. The press-gang boss herded him into a doorway.

"There's the alert. Duck, you guys. Stand still, Red. There's probably no danger-we just don't know. But something might just shake down and fall-so keep your head in."

The honking stopped; but in its place Chris could again hear the humming, now so pervasive that it made his teeth itch in their sockets. The shadow deepened, and out in the bare belt of earth the seething dust began to leap into the air in feathery plumes almost as tall as ferns.

Then the doorway lurched and went askew. Chris grabbed for the frame; and just in time, for a second later, the door jerked the other way; and then, back again. Gradually, the quakes became periodic, spacing themselves farther apart in time, and slowly weakening in violence.

After the first quake, however, Chris's alarm began to dwindle into amazement, for the movements of the ground were puny compared to what was going on before his eyes. The whole city seemed to be rocking heavily, like a ship in a storm. At one instant, the street ended in nothing but sky; at the next, Chris was staring at a wall of sheared earth, its rim looming clifflike, fifty feet or more above the new margin of the city; and then the blank sky was back again.

These huge pitching movements should have brought the whole city down in a roaring avalanche of steel and stone. Instead, only these vague twitchings and shudderings of the ground came through, and even those seemed to be fading away. Now the city was level again, amidst an immense cloud of dust, through which Chris could see the landscape begin to move solemnly past him. The city had stopped rocking, and was now turning slowly. There was no longer even the slightest sensation of movement; the illusion that it was the valley that was revolving around the city was irresistible and more than a little dizzying.

I can see where the spindizzy got its name, Chris thought. Wonder if we go around like a top all the time we're in space? How'll we see where we're going, then?

But now the high rim of the valley was sinking. In a breath, the distant roadbed of the railroad embankment was level with the end of the street; then the lip of the street was at the brow of the mountain; then with the treetops ... and then there was nothing but blue sky, becoming rapidly darker.

The big press-gang leader released an explosive sigh. "By thunder," he said, "we got her up." He seemed, a little dazed. "I guess I never really believed it till now."

"Not so sure I believe it yet," the man called Barney said. "But I don't see any cornices falling-we don't have to hang around here 'any longer. The boss'll have our necks for being even this late."

"Yeah, let's move. Red, use your head and don't give us any more trouble, huh? You can see for yourself, there's no place to run to now."

There was no doubt about that. The sky at the end of the street, and overhead too, was now totally black; and even as Chris looked up, the stars became visible-at first only a few of the brightest, but the others came out steadily in their glorious hundreds. From their familiar fixity Chris could also deduce that the city was no longer rotating on its axis, which was vaguely reassuring, somehow. Even the humming had faded away again; if it was still present, it was now inaudible in the general noise of the city.

Oddly, the sunlight was still as intense as ever. From now on, "day" and "night" would be wholly arbitrary terms aboard the city; Scranton had emerged into the realm of Eternal Daylight-Saving Time.

The party walked two blocks and then stopped while the big man located a cab post and pulled the phone from it. Barney objected at once.

"It'll take a fleet of cabs to get-us all to the Hall," he complained. "And we can't get enough guys into a hack to handle a prisoner, if he gets rough."

"The kid won't get rough. Go ahead and march your man over. I'm not going to walk another foot on this leg."

Barney hesitated, but obviously the big man's marked limp was an unanswerable argument. Finally he shrugged and herded the rest of his party around the corner. His boss grinned at Chris; but the boy looked away.

The cab came floating down out of the sky at the intersection and maneuvered itself to rest at the curb next to them with a finicky precision. There was, of course, nobody in it; like everything else in the world requiring an I.Q. of less than 150, it was computer-controlled. The world-wide dominance of such machines, Chris's father had often said, had been one of the chief contributors to the-present and apparently permanent depression: the coming of semi-intelligent machines into business and technology had created a second Industrial Revolution, in which only the most highly creative human beings, and those most gifted at administration, found themselves with any skills to sell which were worth the world's money to buy.

Chris studied the cab with the liveliest interest, for though he had often seen them before from a distance, he had of course never ridden in one. But there was very little to see. The cab was an egg-shaped bubble of light metals and plastics, painted with large red-and-white checkers, with a row of windows running all around it. Inside, there were two seats for four people, a speaker grille, and that was all; no controls, and no instruments. There was not even any visible, place for the passenger to deposit his fare.

The big press-gang leader gestured Chris into the front seat, and himself climbed into the back. The doors slid shut simultaneously from the ceiling and floor, rather like a mouth closing, and the cab lifted gently until it hovered about six feet above street level.

"Destination?" the Tin Cabby said cheerily, making Chris jump.

"City Hall."

"Social Security number?"

"One five six one one dash zero nine seven five dash zero six nine eight two one seven."

"Thank you."

"Shaddup."

"You're welcome, sir."

The cab lifted vertically, and the gang captain settled back into his seat. He seemed content for the moment to allow Chris to sight-see out the windows at the passing stubby towers of the flying city; he looked relaxed and, a little indulgent, but a little wary, too. Finally he said:

"I need to dutch-uncle you a little, Red. I didn't call a cab because of the leg-I've walked farther on worse. Feel up to listening?"

Chris felt himself freezing. Distracted though he was by all this enormous budget of new experience and the vast reaches of the unknown which stretched before him, the press-gang leader's remark reminded him instantly of Kelly, and as instantly made him ashamed that he had forgotten. In the same rush of anger he remembered that he had been kidnapped, and that now there was no one left to take care of his father and the little kids but Bob. That had been hard enough to do when there had been two of them. It was bad enough that he would never see Annie and Kate and Bob and his father again, but far worse that they should be deprived of his hands and his back and his love; and worst of all, they would never know what had happened.

The little girls would only think that he and Kelly had run away, and wonder why, and mourn a little until they forgot about it. But Bob and his father might well think that he'd deserted them ... most likely of all, that he had gone off with Scranton on his own hook, leaving them all to scrounge for themselves.

There was a well-known ugly term for that among the peasantry of the Earth, expressing all the contempt it felt for any man who abandoned his land, no matter how unrewarding it was, to tread the alien streets and star lanes of a nomad city: it was called, "going Okie."

Chris had gone Okie. He had not done it of his own free will, but his father and Bob and the little girls would never know that. For that matter, it would never have happened had it not been for his own useless curiosity; and neither would the death of poor Kelly, who, Chris now remembered too, had been Bob's dog.

The big man in the hard hat saw his expression ,close down, and made an impatient gesture. "Listen, Red, I know what you're thinking. What good would it do now if

I said I was sorry? What's done is done; you're on board, and you're going to stay on board. We didn't put the snatch on you either. If you didn't know about the impressment laws, you've got your own ignorance to blame."

"You killed my brother's dog."

"No, I didn't. I've got a bad rip or two under that rag to prove I had reasons to kill him; but I wasn't the guy who did it, and I couldn't have done it, either. But that's done too, and can't be undone. Right now I'm trying to help you, and I've got about three minutes left to do it in, so if you don't shut up and listen it'll be too late. You need help, Red; can't you understand that?"

"Why do you bother?" Chris said bitterly.

"Because you're a bright kid and a fighter, and I like that. But that's not going to be enough aboard an Okie city, believe me. You're in a situation now that's totally new to you, and if you've got any skills you can make a career on here, I'll be darned surprised, I can tell you that. And Scranton isn't going to start educating you this far along in your life. Are you smart enough to take some advice, or aren't you? If you aren't, there's no sense in my bothering. You've got about a minute left to think it over."

What the big man said made a bitter dose to have to swallow, but it did seem to make sense. And it did seem likely, too, that the man's intentions were good, otherwise, why would he be taking the trouble? Nevertheless Chris's emotions were in too much of a turmoil for him to trust himself to speak; instead, he merely nodded mutely.

"Good for you. First of all, I'm taking you to see the boss-not the mayor, he doesn't count for much, but Frank Lutz, the city manager. One of the things he'll ask you is what you do, or what you know about. Between now and when we get there, you ought to be thinking up an answer. I don't care what you tell him, but tell him something. And it had better be the thing you know the most about, because he'll ask you questions."

"I don't know anything-except gardening, and hunting," Chris said grimly.

"No, no, that's not what I mean! Don't you have any book subjects? Something that might be useful in space? If you don't, he'll put you to work pitching slag-and you won't have much of a lifetime as an Okie."

The cab slowed, and then began to settle.

"And if he doesn't seem interested in what you tell him, don't try to satisfy him by switching to something else. No true specialist really knows more than one subject, especially at your age. Stick to the one you picked and try to make it sound useful, Understand?"

"Yes, but—"

"No time left for him. One other thing: If you ever get into a jam on board this burg, you'll need to know somebody to turn to, and it'd better not be Frank Lutz. My name is Frad Haskins-not Fred but Frad, F-R-A-D."

The cab hovered for a moment, and then its hull grated against the cobblestones and the doors slid open. Chris was thinking so hard and in so many directions that for a long. moment he did not understand what the press-gang chief was trying to convey by introducing himself. Then the realization hit home, and Chris was struggling unsuccessfully to blurt out his thanks and give his own name at the same time.

"Destination, gentlemen," the Tin Cabby said primly.

"Shaddup. Come along, Red."

Frank Lutz, the city manager of Scranton-in-flight, reminded Chris instantly of a skunk-but by this Chris meant not at all what a city boy would have meant by a skunk. Lutz was small, sleek, handsome, and plump, and even sitting behind his desk, he gave an appearance of slight clumsiness. As he listened to Haskins' account of the two impressments, even his expression had something of the nearsighted amiability of the woods pussy; but as Haskins finished, the city manager looked up suddenly and, Chris knew, if he had ever been in any doubt about it before, that this animal was also dangerous . . . and never more so than, when it seemed to be turning its back.

"That impressment law was a nuisance. But I suppose-we'll have to make a show of maintaining our pickups until we get to some part of space where the police aren't so thick."

"We've got no drug for them, that's for sure," Haskins agreed obscurely.

"That's not a public subject," Lutz said, with such deadly coldness that Chris was instantly convinced that the slip, whatever its meaning, had been intended by Haskins for his own ears. The big man was a lot more devious than his size or his bluffness suggested. That much was becoming clearer every minute. "As for these samples, I don't suppose they can do anything. They never can."

The deceptively mild hazel eyes, watery and inoffensive, swung suddenly to bear on the red-neck. "What's your name?"

"Who wants to know? That's what I want to know. You got-no right—"

"Don't buck me, bum, I haven't got the time. So you've got no name. Have you a trade?"

"I'm no bum, 'm a puddler," the red-neck said indignantly. "A steel puddler."

"Same thing. Anything else?"

"I been a puddler twenty years. 'M a Master Puddler, fair an' square. I got seniority, see? I don' need to be anything else, see? I got a trade. Nobody knows it like I do."

"Been working lately?" the city manager said quietly. "No. But I got seniority. And a card. 'M no bum, 'in a craftsman, see?"

"If you were a Genius Puddler I couldn't use you, buddy. . not even if, as and when we ever see any steel again. This is a Bessemer-process town, and it was one even back when you were an apprentice. You didn't notice? Tough. Barney, Huggins, this one's for the slag heaps."

This order was not executed without a good deal of renewed shouting and struggling, during which Lutz looked back down at his papers, as obviously harmless a critter as a skunk which had just happened upon a bird's egg and was wondering if it might bite, his small hands moving tentatively. When the noise was over, he said:

"I hope your luck was better, Frad. How about it, sonny? Have you got a trade?'

"Yes," Chris said hesitantly. "Astronomy."

"What? At your age?" The city manager stared at Haskins. "What's this, Frad-another one of your mercy projects? Your judgment gets worse every day."

"It's all news to me, boss," Haskins said with complete and obvious honesty. "I thought he was just a scratcher. He never said anything else to me."

The city manager drummed delicately on the top of his desk. Chris held his breath. His claim was ridiculous and he knew it, but he had been able to think of nothing else to answer which would have had a prayer of interesting the boss of a nomad city. Insofar as he had been able to stay awake past dusk, Chris had read a little of everything, and of his reading he bad retained best the facts and theories of history; but Haskins had cautioned him to espouse something which might be useful aboard an Okie city, and plainly it didn't qualify. The fragments of economics he had picked up from his father might possibly have been more useful had there been more of them, and those better integrated into recent history, but his father had never been well enough to do that job since Chris had reached the age of curiosity. He was left with nothing but his smattering of astronomy, derived from books, most of which had been published before he was born, and from many nights spent lying on his back in the fields, breathing clover and counting meteors.

But he had no hope that it would work. A nomad city would need astronomy for navigation, primarily, a subject about which he knew nothing-indeed he lacked even the rudimentary trigonometry necessary to approach it. His knowledge of the parent subject, astronomy, was purely descriptive, and would become obsolete the minute Scranton was far enough away from the Sun to make the constellations hard to recognize-which in fact had probably happened already.

Nevertheless, Frank Lutz seemed to be a little bit baffled, for the first time. He said slowly:

"A Lakebranch kid who claims he's an astronomer! Well, at least it's new to Frad; you've let the kid sell you a hobby. If he ever got through grammar school I'll eat your tin hat, paint and all."

"Boss, I swear I never heard a word of all this until now."

"Hmm. All right, sonny. Name the planets, going outward from the Sun."

That was easy, but the next ones would surely be harder. "Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Proserpina."

"You left out a few didn't you?"

"I left out about five thousand," Chris said, as steadily as he could manage. "You said planets-not asteroids or satellites."

"All right, what's the biggest satellite? And the biggest asteroid?"

"Titan, and Ceres."

"What's the nearest fixed star?"

"The Sun."

The city manager grinned, but he did not seem to be much amused. "Oho. Well, it won't be, not much longer. How many months in a light-year?"

"Twelve, just like any other year. A light-year isn't a measure of time, it's a measure of distance-the distance light travels in a year. Months don't have anything to do with it. You might as well ask how many weeks there are in an inch."

"There are fifty-two weeks to the inch-or it'll seem like that, once you're as old as I am." Lutz drummed on the desk again. "Where'd you get all this stuff? You won't pretend you had any schooling in Lakebranch, I hope?"

"My father taught almost all his life at the University, till it was shut down," Chris said. "He was the best there was. I got most of it from him. The rest I read about, or got from observation, and paper and pencil."

Here Chris was on firm ground, provided only that he be allowed one lie: the substitution of astronomy for economics. The next question did not bother him in the least, for it was thoroughly expectable:

"What's your name?"

"Crispin deFord," he said reluctantly.

There was a surprised guffaw from the remainder of the audience, but Chris did his best to ignore it. His ridiculous name had been a burden to him through so many childhood fights with the neighbors that he was now able to carry it with patience, though still not very gladly. He was surprised, however, to see Haskins raising his bushy bleached eyebrows at him with every evidence of renewed interest What that meant, Chris had no idea; the part of his brain that did his guessing was almost worn out already.

"Check that, somebody," the city manager said. "We've got a couple of people left over from the S. U. faculty, at least. By Hoffa, Boyle Warner was a Scranton prof, wasn't he? Get him up here, and let's close this thing out"

"What's the matter, boss?" Haskins said, with a broad grin. "Running out of trick questions?"

The city manager smiled back, but again the smile was more than a little frosty. "You could call it that," he said, with surprising frankness. "But we'll see if the kid can fool Warner."

"The ole bassar must be good for something," somebody behind Chris mumbled. The voice was quiet, but the city manager heard it; his chin jerked up, and his fist struck a sudden, terrible blow on the top of his desk.

"He's good for getting us where we're going, and don't you forget it! Steel is one thing, but stars are another-we may never see another lie or another ingot without Boyle. Next to him we're all puddlers, just like that red-neck. And that may go for the kid here, too."

"Ah, boy, don't lay it on. What can he know?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out," Lutz said, in a white fury. "What do you know about it? Anybody here know what a geodesic is?"

Nobody answered.

"Red, do you know?"

Chris swallowed. He knew the answer, but he found it impossible to understand why the city manager considered it worth all this noise.

"Yes, sir. It's the shortest distance between two points."

"Is that all?" somebody said incredulously.

"It's all there is between us and starvation," Lutz said. "Frad, take the kid below and see what Boyle says about him; on second thought, I don't want to pull Boyle out of the observatory, he must be up to his eyebrows in course-corrections. Get to Boyle as soon as he's got some free time. Find out if there ever was any Professor deFord at S. U.; and then get Boyle to ask the kid some hard questions. Real hard. If he makes it, he can be an apprentice. If he doesn't, there are always the slag heaps; this has taken too long already."