They Walked Like Men by Simak Clifford D

Author:Simak, Clifford D. [Simak, Clifford D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780532959304
Goodreads: 7617370
Publisher: Manor
Published: 1962-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

XXI

I looked into the rear-vision mirror and the Dog was right. There was a car behind us. It was a one-eyed car.

“Maybe it doesn’t mean a thing,” I said.

I slowed down and made a left-hand turn. The car behind us also made the turn. I made another left and then a right and so did the other car.

“Might be the police,” said Joy.

“With just one light?” I asked. “And if it were, they’d have the siren and the red light going the speed we were hitting back there.”

I made a few more turns. I got on a boulevard and opened up and the car behind us matched our speed.

“What do we do now?” I asked. “I had intended to go back to the university and up to Stirling’s lab. We need to talk with him. But we can’t do it now.”

“How’s the gas?” asked Joy.

“Better than a half a tank.”

“The cabin,” Joy said.

“You mean Stirling’s cabin?”

She nodded. “If we could take his boat and get out in the lake.”

“They’d turn into a Loch Ness monster.”

“Maybe not. Maybe they have never heard of the Loch Ness monster.”

“Then into some other aquatic monster from some other world.”

“But we can’t stay in the city, Parker. Stay here and the police will get into the act.”

“Maybe,” I told her, “that would be the best thing that could happen.”

But I knew it wasn’t. The police would haul us in and we’d lose a lot of time and we could talk from now till doomsday and they’d not .believe a word we said about the bowling balls. And I shivered to think of what would happen if they found a talking dog. They’d figure I was a ventriloquist and was playing tricks on them and they’d be really sore.

I switched over a half a dozen blocks or so until I hit a highway leading north and out of town. If I had to head for anywhere, maybe Stirling’s cabin was as good as any.

There wasn’t any traffic, just a truck every now and then, and I really opened up. The needle hit eighty-five and hung there. I could have pushed it harder, but I was afraid to do it. There were some tricky curves up ahead and I had a hard time remembering exactly where they were. “Still following?” I asked.

“Still following,” said the Dog, “but they have fallen off. They are not so near.”

I knew then that we weren’t going to shake them. We could build up some distance on them, but they would still be there. Unless they missed us at the turnoff for the cabin they’d come piling in behind us—no more than two or three minutes behind us. And I couldn’t be sure we could duck them at the turnoff.

If I was going to shake them, there was going to have to be another way to do it.

The character of the land was changing now. We had left behind us the flat agricultural area and were entering the humpy sand hills covered by evergreens and dotted with small lakes.

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