Runaway World

The Police

     He hugged them all one at a time, then watched as they filed into the airlock. "Don't forget to feed Cagney and Lacey," said David, looking back just before crossing the threshold.

     "They'll be fine, I promise," Andrew replied. "His pet gerbils," he said to the three policemen. "In a cage in their bedroom." Windsor smiled with amusement but Cheval just glowered silently.

     The airlock door closed and there was a hiss as the air was allowed to slowly escape to fall as a light shower of snow at the base of the rover. Every so often someone would go out with an ice pick and a shovel to fill a bucket with frozen nitrogen and oxygen, to replace the air they lost every time they used the airlock, but there was no need to do that for a few days. They had plenty of air on board.

     James was the first to descend, having done it once before and knowing the dangers, and he was able to guide the others safely down. They paused before the external camera for a moment, to wave goodbye to Andrew one last time. Then they began carefully descending the side of the valley, one cautious step at a time.

     Andrew watched then anxiously on the cockpit monitor screen, not allowing himself to relax until they were safely inside the bus. He continued to watch as it made a long, wide turn in the flat valley floor and only allowed himself to relax when it was trundling back the way they'd come. A bus was considerably faster than a hab-rover. They would be safely back in the city within six hours, back in the cramped apartment they'd lived in before taking out a mortgage on the rover, assuming it was still unoccupied. Otherwise they'd be living in one of the communal dorms until Andrew returned.

     "I assume our pursuit of the fugitive can now resume," said Cheval pointedly.

     "Yes," said Andrew. "Of course."

     He fed power to the electric motors that drove the wheels and the rover slowly inched forward. Andrew took it slowly, imagining the spiked, steel wheels slipping and sliding on the bare rock, and indeed the rover did lurch a couple of times, its rear end slipping a metre or so downslope before the unevenness of the rock stopped it from going any further. Cheval, sitting in the co-pilot's chair, grimaced at their slow progress but said nothing, perhaps knowing full well how precarious their situation was. Eventually, though, they were back onto ice, the wheel cleats one again getting a firm grip on the ground beneath them, and Andrew breathed a sigh of relief.

     "So," he said as he carefully descended the side of the valley to the tracks Reginald Fox's rover had left further down. "What was in that box you brought on board?"

     "Guns," said Cheval simply.

     Andrew's head jerked around, his eyes wide with alarm. "What? Guns? What the hell?"

     "If Fox's been planning this from the beginning, there's no telling what he might have brought from the city," the Police Sergeant replied. "Weapons, explosives. We might need to defend ourselves."

     "Where would he even get a gun?"

     "There are illegal 3D printing templates for all kinds of things if you know who to ask and if you've got the money to pay for it. A smart man might even be able to design a gun from scratch. The gunpowder's the only really difficult thing to obtain, but even that can be cooked up in any decently equipped laboratory, such as the one you have at your dig site."

     "People come and go from the lab all the time, he couldn't count on having a long enough period of solitude in which to do such a thing."

     The Sergeant nodded. "I tend to agree, which is why I think it's more likely he brought weapons from the city. We have to be ready, just in case."