Runaway World

The Police

     The bus arrived two hours later.

     It was a much smaller kind of rover, intended for nothing more than the transport of people across the surface of the Earth. The cockpit was much the same, and there was a similar outfitting room and airlock at the back, but in between was nothing but rows of seats arranged in pairs on either side of a central aisle.

     The tiny sun was just beginning to rise, making the summits of the surrounding hills shine brilliantly in the surrounding blackness, when Andrew saw the gleam of headlights at the end of the valley behind them. He watched the bus slowly crawl along the valley floor below, homing in on their transponder signal, and come to a stop when it was almost below them, at the bottom of the mountainslope. A few minutes later the bus's airlock door opened and three men in surface suits climbed carefully out. They went to the side of the bus, opened a hatch and took out a large chest. Two of them carried the chest between them as the three men began carefully climbing the side of the valley.

     Reaching the hab-rover, they placed the chest in its cargo hold, then went around to the airlock. Andrew and his whole family was waiting in the outfitting room when the inner airlock door opened and the three men entered. They took off their helmets and the first man, about fifty and with dignified looking grey temples  glared furiously at Andrew Birch. "Would you care to explain what you're doing just sitting here when you're supposed to be chasing Reginald Fox?" he demanded.

     "And you are?" Andrew replied.

     The man glared harder, then began removing the upper portion of his suit. "Sergeant Charles Cheval, New London Police. This is Constable Frank Windsor and Constable Ivan Kartoshka. We're here to requisition this hab-rover and use it to apprehend Reginald Fox, who is now seven hours ahead of us instead of just five. You were about to explain why."

     "I wasn't willing to risk the safety of my family," Andrew replied stiffly. "We're parked on rock, at an inclinations of nineteen degrees from horizontal. When we move, we run the risk of slipping down the slope and maybe overturning. I wasn't willing to take that risk with my family aboard."

     Cheval continued to glare at him, but then he looked at Susan and the children and his face softened a little. "Your family will suit up and go back to the city in the bus," he said. "You will stay aboard to assist us."

     Andrew nodded and gave a nod to his family, who began stripping off their coveralls. Windsor, still removing his suit, took a moment to admire Susan's bare body. She ignored him. The Birch family then began putting on their surface suits while the three policemen put on the plain white standard issue coveralls that all rovers carried for the use of visitors. There were similar coveralls waiting in the bus for the Birch family when they got there.

     "Be careful!" Susan said to Andrew, her helmet in her hand. "Don't try to be a hero. Let these guys take all the risks."

     "I will, I promise." He put his arms around her and hugged her tightly. She hugged him back. "Just go back to the city by the most direct route. No diversions. Understand?"

     "No diversions," Susan agreed. "We'll just follow the tracks they made, all the way back to New London."

     "Good. Hopefully we'll catch Fox in a couple of days and we'll meet up again. We'll be back at the dig site in no time."

     "We'd better be. Be careful. Understand?"

     "Understood." He kissed her, then hugged her again. Then he turned to the children. "You be careful too. Understood?"

     "You're the one doing the stupid, dangerous thing," James pointed out. "You be careful."

     "I promise."