“You’ll hear,” Heller yelled back and was gone.

Ah, well, there was hope. If he’d given the name he was supposed to use, that (bleeped) clerk would have been all over town with a megaphone. I was thankful Heller was modest. He certainly wasn’t smart. He was trotting up the street now in a scarlet baseball cap with his own initials on it and wearing a long-sleeved baseball undershirt. He had retained the blue-striped pants and red-checked jacket. He stood out like a beacon! And worse than that, the spikes he was wearing were clickety-clacking on the pavement even louder than his old-time hull shoes!

It was Lombar’s fault, really: he had ordered that Heller not be trained in espionage; any self-respecting spy would know you must remain unnoticeable. A trained agent would have looked at the population around him and dressed like that. He sure did not resemble anyone else in that quiet southern town! Looking at him now, to paraphrase the clerk: Jesus!

Heller glanced at his watch. It was getting on toward nine. But he had another stop. It was a candy store!

I groaned. I was dealing with an idiot, not a special agent. Special agents don’t eat candy! They smoke cigarettes!

Some little twelve-year-old kids were in there haggling with the clerk over the price of gumdrops which seemed to have gone up. Two of them were wearing baseball caps, the way little kids do in America. And I realized that Heller, now wearing one, would mind-associate in people that he was even younger!

Heller went down the counter, apparently looking for one particular type of candy. He found it: it was individually wrapped in transparent paper; it was red and white in a spiral, just like it’s advertised in magazines sometimes.

The kids bought their dime’s worth and Heller promptly overwhelmed the aged lady clerk by purchasing ten pounds of candy! Not only did he buy the white and red kind, but also other kinds, and he wanted them all mixed up which brought about the problem of putting them in different bags, all mixed up, and then there not being a big enough bag to contain all the other bags. He sure ruined the day for the old lady clerk.

Laden, Heller got back on the street. There was a cop car parked at the corner. Now any trained agent would have gone the other way. But not Heller. He trotted right past the cop car!

I saw, in peripheral vision, the cops look at him.

It was time to go back and fortify myself with cold sira. And take time off for a small prayer. If they had special Hells for Apparatus case handlers, the one they would send me to would specialize in forcing totally untrained agents on me! Neither the sira nor the prayer helped!

If anything happened to Heller before I got that platen, I was done for!

PART FIFTEEN

Chapter 1

In the room, Mary Schmeck was still restlessly asleep. Heller threw his loot down on his bed. He lifted his two suitcases up on a long bureau, side by side, and unfastened the straps.

I was going to get a look at their contents! Maybe the platen was right on top!

Foolish hope. There were no rocks but there sure was a wild medley of little tubes and boxes and coils of wire. What a junk heap!

Heller got out a small tool case and two small vials. He picked up the two obsolete Nikon cameras and put them on a table. He inspected the edge of a label, then put some drops under the edge and the gold and black NIKON lifted right off! He did the other one.

Then he took two small cases from the grips and opened them. The time-sights! Both of them! Indeed, the tug was planet bound! I knew the Apparatus could never pry another one out of the Fleet!

From the second vial he took a bit of what must be glue and put it on the label backs and in a moment, glaring on the side of each time-sight was NIKON.

They looked now like two Super 8 motion-picture cameras!

He put them back in their small cases and back into the grip. He threw in the two obsolete ones as well.

Then he got out the candy he had made on the ship. The wrappers were a bit different but not remarkably so.

He had what must be three pounds of it! He mixed it into the other candy sacks and then started packing the bags all through the other grip. Very unneatly, too.

Then he packed the broken fishing rods and reels hit or miss through everything. He added the tangles of line in snarls and coils in and over the other contents. Then he took the bass plugs and the weights and began to jam them in anywhere and everywhere.

What a MESS!

And I thought Fleet guys were always so neat!

He had to let the suitcase straps out to accommodate all the extra. He neated up the athletic carry-all and he was ready.

He had picked up a sweet roll, a container of milk and another of coffee while I was in my other room praying. He gently tried to wake up Mary Schmeck. She fought him off, trying to go back to sleep. I could see her pupils were contracted. She wanted nothing to do with the roll or the milk or coffee.

“We’ve got to leave,” said Heller.

This got to her. “Washington,” she said.

“Yes, we’ll be going through Washington, D.C.,” Heller replied.

She muttered, “There’s sure to be some junk in Washington. There always is. It’s full of it. Get me there, for Christ’s sakes.” She tried to get up. Then she screamed, “Oh, my God! My legs!” They were drawing up in knots. She fell back whimpering.

He picked up all the luggage, went out and put it in the back seat. Then he returned and carried Mary Schmeck out and put her in the front seat. He laid her shoes on the floorboards. He put the milk, coffee and the roll in the drink tray.

He had the key in his hand and didn’t know what to do with it, didn’t realize you just left it in the door and slipped away. There was a cleaning woman, an old black woman, coming out of the room next door.

Oh, my Gods! He walked up to her and handed her the key! Drawing attention to himself. You NEVER do that! And then he compounded the felony. He said, “You know what road to take to Washington?”

She had not only seen him now, she knew where he was going! And the first thing police do when they’re searching for a criminal is check the motels! She said, “You jus’ follah Yew S. 29. Charlottesville, Culpeper, Arlington and cross the Potomac and there you is. Mah sister, she lives in Washington and I don’t know what the hell I’m doin’ down heah in Virginia wheah we is still slaves!” I thought to myself, I doubt she’d dare say that to an adult Virginian. Slavery has its points! I almost drifted off thinking about Utanc and then something else happened that recalled me firmly and nervously to duty.

Heller backed out the car, leaned out the window and said, “Thank you, miss, foh a very nahce stay.” And the woman smiled, stood there leaning on the broom and in a moment I could see, in the rearview mirror, that she was staring after the car. And more. I saw the newspaper which hid the license plate blowing off in the car’s wake. For sure she would remember that car. (Bleep) Heller!

No, no, I mustn’t (bleep) him! I must pray he would get through!

He had no trouble whatever in finding U.S. 29 to Charlottesville. He tooled along the four-lane through the lovely Virginia morning, admiring the view. The Cadillac was purring, surprisingly smooth, especially on this smooth road.

It was promising to be a very hot August day and he began to fool with the air conditioning. He set it at seventy-three degrees on the dial, got it functioning on automatic and after a bit, when apparently the hot air had blown out of the car, closed the windows. It was amazingly quiet!

A white board fence fled by. A big sign: