Starman Read online

  “Where are you calling from, Mrs. Hayden?”

  “I don’t know. Some truck stop.”

  “It’s awkward trying to talk like this. Listen, why don’t I come and pick you up so we can chat in person? There are so many questions I badly want to ask you.”

  Through the doors of the phone booth she could see one of the waitresses coming down the aisle between the booths and the counter, instead of stopping at a table to take an order, the woman came right up to the booth and rapped on the glass. She was smiling encouragingly.

  “Hang on a minute, Mr. Shermin.” Jenny put one hand over the receiver and cracked the doors with the other.

  “Is something wrong? Does somebody else want to use the phone? I’ll just be another minute.”

  “Nope.” The waitress jerked her head toward the windows that overlooked the parking lot. “I heard you talking to the boys. You looking for a guy?” She raised her hand over her head, palm facing downward and parallel to the floor. “About yea tall? Red plaid shirt? Kind of nice looking?”

  Shermin’s voice sounded anxious. “Hello? Mrs. Hayden, are you still there?” Jenny ignored him.

  “Yes, yes! Have you seen him?”

  “Sure have.” The older woman turned and gestured toward the highway. “He hitched a ride west with the night cook about half an hour ago. I saw ’em go out together.”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “My pleasure, honey.” The waitress turned and headed back toward the kitchen.

  Jenny spoke rapidly into the phone. “Listen, mister, I’m hanging up now. I’ve got to go. If you want to ask me questions, call me in a couple of days at my parents’ home in Madison. They’re in the book.”

  “Wait! Do you know what you were kidnapped by?”

  “I told you, I wasn’t kidnapped.” She was about to place the receiver on its hook, hesitated, drew it back to her lips a last time. “Look, he doesn’t want to hurt anybody. Really. What happened last night was all the police’s fault. He’s a little uncertain what to do sometimes, but he only means well. Can’t everybody just leave him alone?”

  She hung up before Shermin could reply and dashed out of the booth, grabbing her purse as she fled. The phone couldn’t hurt her. It was only a phone. But she didn’t want to be there if it rang back.

  She halted near the doorway, turned to eye the counter and the booths, took a deep breath and said loudly, “I need a fast ride west!”

  Before any of the truckers could respond, a young man clad in flannel shirt and coveralls with the words BARNEY’S BODY SHOP stenciled across the back was halfway to her. “Let’s go!”

  She eyed him up and down, decided he was too enthusiastic to be dangerous, and nodded, ignoring the envious mutterings of the truckers. Somewhat to her surprise, he held the door open for her as they left.

  Meanwhile Mark Shermin was trying to will the excited, anxious voice back onto the line. “Hello, hello?” Static buzzed teasingly back at him. He finally handed the receiver back to Lemon. “Damm it,” he said quietly. “Did they make the trace?”

  The radioman listened a moment, shook his head. “No luck. They didn’t have much time. You were supposed to keep her on the line.”

  “I tried dammit.”

  “They’re still working on it,” the radioman told him, “but it’s—” he broke off as a new voice sounded over one of the auxiliary speakers.

  “Project Visitor, this is Comcent calling.”

  “Fox again,” Shermin muttered. “Let’s hear what he’s got to say this time.”

  “You want a private channel?”

  “No. Go ahead and pipe it through.”

  Lemon nodded, flipped a switch. Shermin was on speakerphone now and could talk to his boss without having to bother with the handheld receiver.

  “Yes, sir, I’m here.”

  “Shermin? Good. Listen carefully. There are no more ambiguities. I’ve just left the White House. The orders were clear. We want that alien. We want him alive if possible, but we want him. There’s to be no more hide-and-seek playing, even if the media’s brought in. We don’t know what our visitor’s intentions are and some of the military people back here are starting to get real nervous.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that since he hasn’t walked into a police station or even a post office to give himself up, the feeling here is that he doesn’t intend to do so. So we’re going to give him a lift to someplace nice and quiet before he can cause a panic, like he nearly did on the Interstate the other night, and before somebody gets hurt.”

  “I’ve hushed that up, sir. We’ve no press problems on that one.”

  “Fifty people watch a car plow into a gas tanker, blow up, and then the occupants of the car come floating out on a beam of light and you say you managed to ‘hush it up?’ ”

  “We told the onlookers that we were making a movie.”

  “Oh. And they bought it?”

  “Why not? It sure as hell looked like something out of a movie.”

  “Okay, good work, but there’s no guarantee we’ll be that lucky if something like that happens again.”

  “Listen sir, if you want my opinion, I think we ought to . . .”

  “I’ll be on a plane in fifteen minutes, Shermin. No more pussyfooting around, understand? We want him in custody in twenty-four hours.” The line went dead.

  Lemon was sympathetic. “Tough trying to talk to the top brass, huh?”

  “It is when their heads are made of it. Brass, that is.”

  “What now?”

  Shermin looked back out toward the highway, the long line of vehicles, the sweating troops checking faces and IDs. “Maybe we get lucky.”

  The sign said GRAND JUNCTION—5 MILES. The old Chevy banged past, its engine and transmission, not to mention the chassis, held together by love and baling wire. The night cook from Elmo’s was no mechanic and he was saving his money for better things. But the car still ran, and the sole passenger did not mind the smell of oil. It was something else to analyze.

  The cook was no motor-mouth, but his radio wasn’t working and the total silence was beginning to grate. Since his passenger wasn’t about to volunteer anything, it behooved him to try to start a conversation.

  “What’s your line, friend?”

  The young man seated next to him seemed to pull his attention back from somewhere far away. “ ‘Line?’ ”

  “Work. Job, profession, occupation. What do you do when you’re not hitchin’ rides?”

  “Oh.” He considered, decided that a simple answer would be best for a simple question, even if it was a gross oversimplification. “I make maps.”

  The cook perked up. “Hey, that sounds interesting. I have enough trouble reading the damn things without imagining what it would be like trying to make one.” He nodded at the surrounding mountains. “Bet you’re into oil. There’s a lot of oil around here, or so they say. Me, I never seen any of it. Except the kind that comes out of a bottle that I use on my grill.” He grinned. The starman politely grinned back at him.

  “You like it?”

  “Yes. It is—fulfilling work.”

  “Make any money?”

  “No. There are other—compensations.”

  “Yeah, I can dig that. You don’t get rich cookin’, either, believe me. But everybody has to do what they can, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I like the hours. I don’t sleep as much as I used to and workin’ nights I can be home with the family most of the day. But the money makes it tough sometimes.” A touch of pride crept into his voice. “I got a girl goin’ to college this fall. The wife had to go back to nursing to help pay for it, but we’ll manage. Suzy’s goin’ to have her chance no matter what. First one in the family to go to college. Ain’t that somethin’?” He slipped a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, used his lips to remove one and offered the pack to his companion.

  “Smoke?”

  The starman accepted the
cigarette and watched carefully as the cook adjusted his own in his mouth. He echoed the gesture, fully expecting the man to begin chewing on the thin, aromatic cylinder. Instead, to his considerable surprise, the cook produced a portable source of flame and set fire to the combustible plant material the the paper roll contained.

  “She wants to be a doctor,” the cook was telling him. “Like I said, the wife and I are going to do our best, but it worries me. Medical school and all that. ’Course after Suzy gets her degree, she’ll be able to work part-time and help out with tuition and stuff. Costs an arm and a leg to raise a kid these days.”

  “ ‘Arm and a leg?’ ” Although unfamiliar with it, the starman immediately perceived this as an idiomatic expression, as the cook still had his full complement of limbs.

  “Geetus. Bread. Money, and lots of it.” He reached over to light his passenger’s cigarette, then inhaled on his own. The starman managed a passable imitation of the procedure until he began to choke. His eyes reddened and the cook cleared his lungs with a sharp whack on the back.

  “Got to watch it. Those Camels can get to you if you’re used to the lighter stuff. Me, I got no use for menthol and lights and all that crap. Smokin’ all those chemicals is bad for your health. Right?”

  “Right.” The starman coughed.

  The hopped-up sedan was tooling down the Interstate at nearly eighty miles per hour. Every so often the young driver would take a glance at the radar detector clipped to his sun visor. Each time he checked it it was blank and he’d push their speed up another notch.

  “How’m I doing?” he asked his passenger, yelling above the rumble of the engine.

  “Fine,” Jenny told him. Then her eyes went wide.

  The young man smoothly slid around the big truck ahead of them and cut back just in front of the other truck that had been coming toward them. Jenny hung on for dear life, didn’t relax much as they swung back into the safety of the right-hand lane. Behind them, the twin blast of different air horns was already fading.

  “Of course,” she added as she fought to get her breath back, “I’d like to get where I’m going in one piece.”

  “Hey, no sweat, sugar. Relax and leave the driving to Dave.” Despite their speed he looked relaxed and confident, Jenny wished she could relax. She thought longingly back to the brief moments of real sleep she’d enjoyed at the big motel.

  “None of my business,” he said casually, “but what did you do?”

  “Do?” She eyed him blankly.

  He grinned, kept his eyes on the road ahead. “C’mon, sugar, you don’t need to play coy with me. Somebody’s after you and I’ll bet it ain’t your Uncle George.”

  “Okay, I’ll level with you.” She paused a moment to think up something plausible. “We robbed a bank.”

  “Out-standing!” He seemed to straighten a little in his seat. “How much did you get away with? Where’d you do it? How many are there in your gang? Was there any shooting?”

  Terrific, she thought. A TV addict. Well, what the hell. He was taking her where she wanted to go. The least she could do was supply the entertainment. She launched into a lengthy and highly fanciful description of the nonexistent robbery, utilizing every cliché from every cops-and-robbers film she’d ever seen.

  Her driver ate it up . . .

  The battered old Chevy topped an overpass and pulled off on the ramp. Ahead lay the outskirts of the town of Grand Junction—and something else.

  The cook frowned as he studied the highway ahead. One at a time, a seemingly endless line of westbound vehicles was inching its way through a line of army vehicles. Trucks mostly, but a couple of tanks sat off to one side of the main road, their operators conversing lazily. Once in a while an irate traveler would lean on his horn, but for the most part everyone bore the unexpected delay stoically.

  “What’s the deal? War games of some kind, I guess. We get those guys in from the base all the time. Didn’t hear anything about this on the news, though.” He shrugged. “Boys will be boys. Me, I’m glad I’m too old for that kind of kid stuff.”

  The starman turned to him. “War games?”

  “Yeah. Silly, ain’t it?” He nodded forward. “Just the upkeep on one of those tanks would pay my girl’s way through medical school. Then we’d have one more doctor in the country to help people. But who am I to say where my tax money’s supposed to go? I’m just a citizen, right?” He jerked a thumb toward the side road that climbed away from the Interstate and back into the hills.

  “This here’s my turnoff. I live right up the road but our trailer’s back on a creek. Can’t hear the traffic and it’s nice and convenient. Don’t care much for living in town. Buy you a cup of coffee? The wife’s always glad of company.”

  “No. I must go.” He reached for the door handle.

  “You don’t come from around here, do you? This country, I mean.”

  The starman hesitated. “No.”

  “You German? Scandinavian, maybe? My grandfather on my mother’s side was a Swede.”

  “No. Farther than that.”

  “I guessed as much. What do you think of it?”

  “Think of it?”

  “This country. The folks hereabouts.”

  He considered the question carefully before replying. “I don’t know yet.”

  “But you’re workin’ on an opinion?”

  “Yes.” He pushed down on the door handle and opened the door to let himself out. “I am working on an opinion.”

  There was a lot of dust and an equal amount of confusion as the soldiers tried to keep order among the drivers of the double line of vehicles. Tempers grew shorter as the temperature rose and while most of the drivers handled it well, there were a few who had deadlines to meet and they let the soldiers know what they thought of the holdup in less than polite terms. There was a lot of talk about writing congressmen and the local papers.

  For their part, the troops weren’t happy about being called away from their comfortable barracks, hustled into trucks, and hauled out into the middle of nowhere to play traffic cop.

  It was bad enough having to check every damn trunk, but orders were to search trailers and motor homes as well, to the intense displeasure of the vehicle’s owners. There’d already been one casualty: a corporal who’d jerked open the door of a Winnebago before consulting its irate owner, only to find himself face to face with an angry and very territorial German shepherd.

  Someone in the middle of the line had decided to amuse himself by tooting out children’s songs on his car horn. Further back in the line a group of younger and less uptight travelers had tuned up their guitars and initiated an impromptu songfest. Neighboring drivers joined in with voices and appreciative handclapping.

  Patiently the soldiers carried out their assignments, hoping it wouldn’t be much longer until the two people in the photographs they’d been handed put in an appearance.

  The cook gave his passenger a farewell half-salute. The starman returned the gesture in kind, watched as the Chevy worked its way up the side road. Then he turned and started walking down the shoulder toward the distant line of vehicles.

  Shermin had strolled over to the roadblock. Surveying the travelers waiting to get through, he noted the presence of backpackers and day hikers roaming around and decided he’d better comment on it.

  “Better get these pedestrians in line. Some of them are slipping around the end and ignoring the checkpoint.”

  “Yes sir.” The lieutenant looked meaningfully at his first sergeant, a career man who wanted nothing more than to be back in the NCO club on the base and instead found himself stuck out here on the highway in the middle of a hot afternoon. “You heard the man.”

  “Right, sir.” Grumbling under his breath the older man turned and began passing the word to his men. “All right, let’s shape it up here!” He called over a couple of hikers, envying them their cool shorts and short-sleeved shirts. “You folks have to go through the checkpoint just like everybody else. Come on now,
I’m not enjoying this any more than you are—pay attention, soldier, and keep ’em in line, will you? All you pedestrians there, line up on the right.” He gave one man who might have been partly deaf a gentle push back toward the processional.

  Near the rear of the line the starman obediently took his place. Up ahead, the lieutenant and the sergeant were working their way toward him, checking faces and papers as they came.

  Eight

  The young man slowed. Heat rose in ripples from the hood of his car. “I guess we missed him. Some kind of roadblock up ahead. I’d better stop here—my rear tires aren’t standard and the cops can make trouble for you when they’re feeling antsy. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. You did your—oh!” She was staring at the line of people on foot. “Oh no.”

  “What, where?” asked her champion, peering over the wheel and trying to see what had upset her.

  She gestured with a wavering finger. “That’s him up ahead, in that line! They’ll find him.”

  “Like hell they will,” said the young man huskily. He thromped the accelerator and the oversized engine roared.

  By this time the starman had grasped the purpose behind the roadblock. The attitudes displayed by the disgruntled drivers nearby and by the people in front of and behind him indicated it was not a normal, everyday occurrence. It had been set up for a special reason.

  He saw that the men in uniform who were working their way down the line toward him were carefully inspecting each person before allowing them to continue on their way. He knew that he had to get out of the line before they reached him, but he was surrounded on all sides by armed humans. If he suddenly left and began to run they’d capture him for sure.

  A noise made him turn. Something loud and mechanical was coming toward the line at high speed. Everyone turned to look. Some broke and ran as the car came barreling down the shoulder of the Interstate straight toward them.

  It executed a sharp U-turn and kicked up a huge cloud of dust, fishtailing through the dirt and weeds. The lieutenant gaped at it like everyone else, then turned to yell an order. As he inhaled, his mouth filled with dust.