Runaway World

Ascent

     "We still need to spray insulating foam on the underside of the belly," Andrew pointed out.

     "There's nothing but vacuum under us now," said Cheval, though. "The best insulator there is. We'll be okay. Are you able to drive the rover and re-acquire Fox's trail?"

     "Yes," said Andrew, trying to make himself sound doubtful. Secretly he was surprised and delighted by how little damage the rover had taken in the fall, but he wouldn't let the others know that. It might encourage them to take more liberties with his home. As it was, though, the rover could still make its way anywhere in the world and all the hurts it had suffered could be fixed in a couple of weeks in a city garage. Repairs that the city would pay for.

     "Good," said Cheval. "Then the rest of us will retire to the command post and try to see how far ahead of us Fox is now."

     He rose from his chair, and the two constables preceded him to the ladder to the upper deck leaving Andrew alone to try to pick his way past the remaining buildings of the city, hidden under the ice. Every one a potential trap, and next time the damage they suffered might be far worse.

☆☆☆

     The city didn't have an 'edge' as such, but Andrew took them back to where there were no more tall buildings standing above the ice, and then went a little further, just to be safe. Then he turned east and drove around the city in a wide circle. He suspected that they were driving across several buildings even so, but the ice above them was thick and strong. They wouldn't have fallen into the library if Fox hadn't used explosives to break it up. Whatever the reason, they made their way to the south of the city without incident and picked up Fox's trail two hours later. He turned to follow it, then used the intercom to inform the policemen.

     Cheval appeared in the cockpit almost immediately. He sat in the co-pilot's chair and stared out through the window at the tracks leading away from them in the ice. "We estimate we're back to being twelve hours behind him," he muttered sullenly. "We've lost all the ground we gained since Kartoshka."

     "We're still twelve hundred kilometres from Etna," said Andrew. "If that's where he's going. And he has to find his way through the Alps. He's not going to want to risk running into a dead end now that he's got this kind of lead on us, so he'll want to use a pass that he can be confident will take him all the way through. The biggest, straightest pass there is." He pointed to the map on one of the cockpit screens. "I'm betting he'll take the Huebenweg pass. And if we know that, we can have the other rovers cut him off at the other end, if they can get there in time."

     Cheval grinned with amusement. "You've thought this through, haven't you? Maybe I was wrong not to trust you. If only some of your comments hadn't been so... Questionable."

     "If I was a Remainer, wouldn't I have been more careful what I said?"

     "Unless that's what you wanted us to think." He eyed Andrew suspiciously.

     Andrew let it pass. "Can the other rovers get there in time?" he asked.

     "Yes," Cheval replied. "If we can be sure that that's the path he'll be using. He may think it's too obvious. There are other passes, after all."

     "Passes that might be blocked by ice falls and pressure ridges, or booby trapped by the people of New Rome. We know they barricaded all the passes to keep the mobs from using them to approach their city. Does he want to run the risk of running into an automated sentry system, somehow still active after all these years?"

     Cheval looked thoughtful. All twelve of the underground cities had used automatic defence systems of one kind or another, including New London. They were atomic powered, which meant they could warm themselves and remain operational no matter how cold the surface became, and some of them fired laser beams, which meant they would never run out of ammunition. It was assumed that the mobs that had overrun the underground city had destroyed all these automated defence, but it was always possible that they'd overlooked one in one of the narrower, lesser used passes.