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Macready and two of his men.
Kerans and Beatrice had spent the night in the sick-bay aboard Riggs' patrol
cruiser, a well-armed 30-ton PT boat which was now moored against the
hydroplane in the central lagoon. The unit had arrived shortly after midnight,
and a reconnaissance patrol reached the testing station on the perimeter of
the drained lagoon at about the time Kerans entered Strangman's suite in the
depot ship. Hearing the ensuing gunfire, they descended immediately into the
square.
"I guessed Strangman was here," Riggs explained. "One of our aerial patrols
reported seeing the hydroplane about a month ago, and I reckoned you might
have a little trouble with him if you were still hanging on. The pretext of
trying to reclaim the testing station was a fair one." He sat on the edge of
the desk, watching the helicopter circle the open streets. "That should keep
them quiet for a bit."
"Daley seems to have found his wings at last," Kerans commented.
"He's had a lot of practice." Riggs turned his intelligent eyes on Kerans,
asked casually:
"By the way, is Hardman here?"
"Hardman?" Kerans shook his head slowly. "No, I haven't seen him since the day
he disappeared. He'll be a long way off by now, Colonel."
"You're probably right. I just thought he might be around." He flashed Kerans
a sympathetic smile, evidently having forgiven him for scuttling the testing
station, or sensible enough not to press the matter so soon after Kerans'
ordeal. He pointed to the streets below glowering in the sunlight, the dry
silt on the rooftops and walls like caked dung. "Pretty grim down there. Damn
shame about old Bodkin. He really should have come north with us."
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Kerans nodded, looking across the office at the machete scars sliced into the
woodwork around the door, part of the damage gratuitously inflicted on the
station after Bodkin's death.
Most of the mess had been cleaned up, and his body, lying among the
bloodstained programme charts in the laboratory below, flown out to the patrol
cruiser. To his surprise Kerans realised that callously he had already
forgotten Bodkin and felt little more than a nominal pity for him. Riggs'
mention of Hardman had reminded him of something far more urgent and
important, the great sun still beating magnetically within his mind, and a
vision of the endless sandbanks and blood-red swamps of the south passed
before his eyes.
He went over to the window, picking a splinter from the sleeve of his fresh
uniform jacket, and stared down at the men huddled under the depot ship.
Strangman and the Admiral had gone forward towards the machine-gun, and were
remonstrating with Macready, who was shaking his head impassively.
"Why don't you arrest Strangman?" he asked.
Riggs laughed shortly. "Because there's absolutely nothing I can hold him on.
Legally, as he full well knows, he was absolutely entitled to defend himself
against Bodkin, kill him if necessary." When Kerans looked round over his
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shoulder in surprise he continued: "Don't you remember the Reclaimed Lands Act
and the Dykes Maintenance Regulations? They're still very much in force. I
know Strangman's a nasty piece of work--with that white skin and his
alligators--but strictly speaking he deserves a medal for pumping out the
lagoon. If he complains, I'll have a job explaining that machine-gun down
there. Believe me, Robert, if I'd arrived five minutes later and found you
chopped to bits Strangman could have claimed that you were an accomplice of
Bodkin's and
I'd have been able to do nothing. He's a clever fellow."
Tired out after only three hours' sleep, Kerans leaned against the window,
smiling wanly to himself as he tried to resolve Riggs' tolerant attitude
towards Strangman with his own experiences of the man. He was conscious that
an even wider gulf now divided Riggs and himself.
Although the Colonel was only a few feet away from him, emphasising his
argument with brisk flourishes of the baton, he was unable to accept wholly
the idea of Riggs' reality, almost as if his image were being projected into
the testing station across enormous distances of time and space by some
elaborate three-dimensional camera. It was Riggs, and not himself, who was the
time-
traveller. Kerans had noticed a similar lack of physical validity about the
rest of the crew. Many of the original members had been replaced--all those, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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