Stealing For The Sky by Adam Roberts

Author:Adam Roberts [Roberts, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NeoText

9

SNOW ROAD

There was a hitch in terms of leaving the museum site. The display space floor was concrete, so they rolled easily over that, but the combined weight of the rig and its cargo was so large that the front wheels sunk down into the unpaved ground outside, frozen though it was.

Starman was able to back up, but they had to rethink how they were going to get the huge truck off the site. In the end Cavell and Starman went back to the diggers, used them to strip some metal sheets from the wall and dump them outside in the snow as a makeshift road. All they needed was enough space to turn the huge truck onto the tarmac of the perimeter way. After some struggling, and a lot of complaining from the rig’s engines, they managed this.

From here it was easier. The main gate was still down. Nobody had come to check on the damage. They drove straight through.

‘Goodbye, shuttip!’ called Kashl, waving, as they left.

They were much heavier now, which meant it was a much slower business going than it had been coming, but they were at least underway. Snow was falling steadily, which reduced visibility, and the windscreen wipers kept sticking. But this wasn’t all bad: their reduced visibility was everyone’s reduced visibility. It was going to be hard, perhaps impossible, for anyone else to surveil them, or track where they were going.

The rig pressed tire tracks into the snow behind them, gnarled and endless bony dinosaur spines modelled in ice. The sky was replenishing the snow and soon enough their tracks would be invisible.

It was horribly cold in the cab. Starman had to raise his voice over the noise of the engine. ‘Cavell,’ he called. ‘Can’t you see if something can be done about the heater? It’s a fridge in here.’

Cavell scowled and went through the motions, half-heartedly, of fiddling with the outlets.

A single car passed them. One of its headlights was broken, and the other threw out a yellow jousting-pole of light through the falling snow. The jouster swept away to Starman’s left and dwindled in the rearview screen.

It was coming up for nine o’clock in the morning, but the light was very dim. Snowflakes flurried like swarming insects.

They trundled down the empty freeway. Eventually they came to the intersection.

Turning off the main freeway onto the forest road, for a rig the weight and length of the one Starman was driving, was no easy thing. But slowly hauling the huge steering wheel round, he managed it. The wheels skidded on the snow for a while, but: low torque, gaining traction, he slowly got the huge truck going again.

‘We go to forest?’ Kashl asked.

‘We got to pick up some hydrogen,’ said Cavell.

‘Hydrogen,’ repeated Kashl.

La Donna Martini had parked her tanker in a woodland carpark and picnic area. This had entailed knocking some snow-covered tables out of the way, but that meant there was enough space for Starman to back the rear of the two flatbed components of his trailer into the space.

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