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"Why didn't you get me up right away?"
"You needed the sleep, and there was nothing you could do but get tense and nervous."
"Okay, you're probably right. Tell me about the raid."
"Six vehicles, proceeding westward, were apparently ambushed by an undetermined number of wild cars sometimes last night. The Patrol Copter was reporting it from above the scene and I listened in. All the vehicles were stripped and drained and their brains were smashed, and their passengers were all apparently killed too. There were no signs of movement."
"How far is it now?"
"Another two or three minutes."
The windshields came clear once more, and Murdock stared as far ahead through the night as the powerful lamps could cut.
"I see something," he said, after a few moments.
"This is the place," said Je
They drew up beside the ravaged cars. His seat belt unstrapped and the door sprang open on his side.
"Circle around, Je
The door slammed and Je
The Plain was like a sand-strewn dance floorчhard and grittyчbeneath his feet. There were many skid-marks, and a spaghetti-work of tire tracks lay all about the area.
A dead man sat behind the wheel of the first car. His neck was obviously broken. The smashed watch on his wrist said 2:24. There were three personsчtwo women and a young manчlying about forty feet away. They had been run down as they tried to flee from their assaulted vehicles.
Murdock moved on, inspected the others. All six cars were upright. Most of the damage was to their bodies. The tires and wheels had been removed from all of them, as well as essential portions of their engines; the gas tanks stood open, siphoned empty; the spare tires were gone from the sprung trunks. There were no living passengers.
Je
"Sam," she said, "pull the brain leads on that blue car, the third one back. It's still drawing some energy from an ancillary battery, and I can hear it broadcasting."
"Okay."
Murdock went back and tore the leads free. He returned to Je
"Did you find anything?"
"Some traces, heading northwest."
"Follow them."
The door slammed and Je
They drove for about five minutes in silence. Then Je
"What?"
"I just heard it on the news. Apparently two of the cars communicated with the wild ones on an off-band. They threw in with them. They gave away their location and turned on the others at the time of the attack."
"What about their passengers?"
"They probably monoed them before they joined the pack."
Murdock lit a cigarette, his hands shaking.
"Je
"I do not know, Sam. I have never thought about it."
"Ten years ago the Devil Car, their leader, killed my brother in a raid on his Gas Fortress," said Murdock, "and I've hunted that black Caddy ever since. I've searched for it form the air and I've searched on foot. I've used other cars. I've carried heat trackers and missiles. I even laid mines. But always it's been too fast or too smart or too strong for me. Then I had you built."
"I knew you hated it very much. I always wondered why," Je
Murdock drew on his cigarette.
"I had you specially programmed and armored and armed to be the toughest, fastest, smartest thing on wheels, Je
"You could have stayed home, Sam, and let me do the hunting."
"No. I know I could have, but I want to be there. I want to give the orders, to press some of the buttons myself, to watch that Devil Car burn away to a metal skeleton. How many people, how many cars has it smashed? We've lost count. I've got to get it, Je
"I'll find it for you, Sam."
They sped on, at around two hundred miles per hour.
"How's the fuel look, Je
"Plenty there, and I have not yet drawn upon the auxiliary tanks. Do not worry."
"чThe track is getting stronger," she added.
"Good. How's the weapons system?"
"Red light, all around. Ready to go."
Murdock snubbed out his cigarette and lit another.
"...Some of them carry dead people strapped inside," said Murdock, "so they'll look like decent cars with passengers. The black Caddy does it all the time, and it changes them pretty regularly. It keeps its interior refrigeratedчso they'll last."
"You know a lot about it, Sam."
"It fooled my brother with phoney passengers and phoney plates. Hot him to open his Gas Fortress to it that way. Then the whole pack attacked. It's painted itself red and green and blue and white, on different occasions, but it always goes back to black, sooner or later. It doesn't like yellow or brown or two-tone. I've a list of almost every phoney plate it's ever used. It's even driven the big freeways right into towns and fueled up at regular gas stops. They often get its number as it tears away from them, just as the attendant goes up on the driver's side for his money. It can fake dozens of human voices. They can never catch it afterwards, though, because it's souped itself up too well. It always makes it back here to the Plain and loses them. It's even raided used car lotsч"
Je
"Sam! The trail is quite strong now. _This_ way! It goes off in the direction of those mountains."
"Follow!" said Murdock.
For a long time then Murdock was silent. The first inklings of morning began in the east. The pale morning star was a white thumbtack on a blueboard behind them. They began to climb a gently slope.
"Get it, Je
"I think we will," she said.
The angle of the slope increased. Je
"It's harder going here," she said, "also, the trail is getting more difficult to follow."
"Why's that?"
"There is still a lot of background radiation in these parts," she told him, "and it is throwing off my tracking system."
"Keep trying, Je
"The track seems to go straight toward the mountains."
"Follow it, follow it!"
They slowed some more.
"I am all fouled up now, Sam," she said. "I have just lost the trail."
"It must have a stronghold somewhere around hereчa cave or something like thatчwhere it can be sheltered overhead. It's the only way it could have escaped aerial detection all these years."
"What should I do?"
"Go as far forward as you can and scan for low openings in the rock. Be wary. Be ready to attack in an instant."
They climbed into the low foothills. Je
"Nothing yet," said Je
"Then we'll cruise along the length of it and keep sca
"To the right or to the left?"
"I don't know. Which way would you go it you were a renegade car on the lam?"
"I do not know."
"Pick one. It doesn't matter."
"To the right, then," she said, and they turned in that direction.
After half an hour the night was dropping away behind the mountains. To his right morning was exploding at the far end of the Plains, fracturing the sky into all the colors of autumn trees. Murdock drew a squeeze bottle of hot coffee, of the kind spacers had once used, from beneath the dashboard.