Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell by Eric Frank Russell

Author:Eric Frank Russell [Russell, Eric Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2014-07-14T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Business was stalled yet again first thing the next morning, and before he had time even to look through the mail. He arrived at the office, having been tailed by his escort all the way from home, removed his hat and made ready to sling it on to a hook.

“Don’t let go,” advised Norris. “Haul it back and stick it on your head. You’re departing right away.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t know. They haven’t seen fit to confide in me.” That was true enough. Norris’s mind held no more information than that an official car had arrived to take Harper some place else, that he would be away the full day and that the guard was commanded to maintain its watch on the plant during his absence.

Harper did not argue the matter this time. Reluctantly he was becoming resigned to the situation. Replacing the hat, he went outside, entered the car in which sat only a driver.

As they moved off a second machine bearing four men followed close behind. Harper waved a satirical goodbye to Norris, who was standing on the sidewalk trying to puzzle out the reason for this peremptory removal of the bait from the trap. Around the corner a third car suddenly pulled out from the curb and took the lead. This one also held a hard-looking quartet.

“Quite a cavalcade,” Harper remarked. “Somebody is according me the importance I’ve long deserved.”

The driver made no response, concentrated solely on following the car ahead. He was a beetle-browed individual of the type that doesn’t know the meaning of fear—or any other words. To the rear the third vehicle kept a careful twenty yards distant.

“A hundred dollars if you step on it and lose the entire bunch.”

No reply. Not so much as a smile.

Giving it up, Harper slumped in his seat, half-closed his eyes while his mind felt around like invisible fingers. His own driver, he found, knew nothing except that he must keep on the tail of the leading machine, be prepared for trouble and on no account face it if he could run out of it.

The fingers explored farther.

Those in the leading car knew where the procession was heading. And from that moment, so did Harper. He mulled the new-found knowledge a minute or two, dismissed the purpose as something he would learn in due course, gazed idly through the door-glass at passing shops and pedestrians. With habit born of the last few days he made a mental sweep of the neighborhood every now and again.

They had passed through two sets of traffic lights and over a dozen cross-streets when alien impulses reached him, weak with distance but discernible. Something high up that side-road, six, eight or maybe ten hundred yards away.

Something that flashed pseudo-human thoughts in spasms with gigglings and gobblings between.

He sat up red-faced and snapped, “Quick! Turn up there.”

Beetle-brows firmed his thick lips, gave a warning toot on his horn and speeded up. Two faces peered through the rear window of the car ahead which likewise increased its pace.

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