The Mind-­Twisters Affair - Stratton Thomas. Страница 23

Napoleon looked at him admiringly. "You're developing a very creditable mean streak," he said.

Illya concentrated on negotiating another curve. As he slid into it, he could see the Thrush car emerging from the cloud. "Now that we're on a side road, how about the laser system?" he asked.

Napoleon peered backward for a moment, then shook his head. "I'm not well enough checked out on that thing to try hitting something on these curves. And on a straight road, we won't need it."

Illya nodded. All he really needed was a few miles of straight road; he felt sure he could run away from anything on the road.

Signs warned of an intersecting highway. Illya braked again and swung onto it. The pursuit took the corner on two wheels and almost ended up in the ditch, but the driver fought the car back under control and continue There were more curves and then Illya grinned as the car topped a low hill and the headlights revealed a long expanse of straightaway, with no other cars in sight. He floored the accelerator again and simultaneously cut in the car's high speed supercharged exhaust system. On either side, berm and fencerows became a gray blur. Behind, the Thrush car. dropped steadily further back but continued to pursue.

"If this just holds out a little longer," Illya murmured hopefully. "We'll have -"

The car swooped over the crest of a bill and he saw that the road was totally blocked just ahead.

Chapter 11

"Who Ever Heard Of A Flying Saucer With A Parachute"

A SIGN READING "Beaver Dam, Pop. 862" went by in blur as Illya and Napoleon bore down on a street fair that stretched along the highway for blocks. Reacting automatically, Illya simultaneously shut off the afterburner, punched the button to fire the braking parachute, and applied the conventional brakes. The savage jolt as the chute took hold almost threw the car off the road, but Illya managed to hold it under control as their speed dropped below 100.

At 50, he discarded the parachute and a second later, skidded around a corner on screaming tires, still a half block from the near edge of the street fair. A block off the highway, he came to another street running parallel to the highway. Now at normal speed, Illya turned onto it and found himself confronted by an extension of the fair. A large, darkened tent loomed invitingly at the next intersection, and without hesitating, Illya drove inside. The two agents paused only long enough to let out their breath, which they realized they had been holding since they came over the last hill, then got out and locked the car.

"I take it we stay here while the pursuit goes merrily by," Napoleon said as they walked out of the tent and carefully closed the flaps behind them.

A sudden crash, followed by an outburst of shouting came from the general direction of the highway. "The pursuit doesn't seem to be very merry at the moment," Napoleon commented.

"Let's hope that was the only car," Illya said as he started to trot forward a little faster. "I saw another pair of headlights back there once, I think. At the speed we were going, it had to be either Thrush or some local hot rodder who wanted to race."

By now they were merging with the crowd that swarmed over the brightly lighted highway. The Thrush car, obviously going at a good speed and lacking a parachute brake, hadn't been able to stop in time. At the last minute, the driver bad managed to avoid the Ferris wheel but had steered into what proved to be a livestock tent. While the lone passenger indulged in a nose-to-nose confrontation with an annoyed cow, the driver was arguing with a local law officer, apparently the sheriff.

"But dammit, you're blocking a state highway!" the driver was shouting.

The sheriff looked as unimpressed as the livestock. "Son, we've been blocking this highway for our Muck Crop Festival for twenty years. We've got a court order saying we can block this highway. Now then, I know how much space you had to stop in and you didn't make it. You can have your choice - speeding or defective brakes. Which will it be?"

Meanwhile, another hubbub was breaking out on t fringes of the crowd. Someone had spotted the chute lying at the side of the street almost a block away. "I told you I saw a parachute!" someone was indignantly.

"And there was a little round ship that came down with it!" another chimed in. "It made a terrible screaming noise as it came down and I saw port holes a strange yellow man in it."

"Yeah, me too," said a third. "It just hovered there for a minute and shot out of sight over the trees."

"Don't be silly," someone else said. "Whoever heard of a flying saucer with a parachute?"

"What's wrong with a parachute?" the first man asked still sounding huffy. "That's how our space capsules down. Why shouldn't theirs?"

"What would a flying saucer want to observe a Crop Festival for?" a bewildered individual asked. "What does it all mean?"

At this point, another car came tearing over the hill and came to a lurching, tire-squealing stop halfway between the parachute and the Ferris wheel. The driver got out quickly and headed for the first car. The sheriff waved to him as he walked past where he was slowly and deliberately writing out a ticket for the driver of the first car.

"Good brakes there, son," the sheriff said cheerfully. The driver of the second car smiled weakly and we up to the first car, nudging the cow out of his way. After exchanging a few words with the passenger, he left and headed directly for the spot where the U.N. C.L.E. agents were standing.

Illya and Napoleon hastily faded into an alley and ducked around the corner of a garage as the Thrush also entered the alley and pulled out a communicator. He spoke quietly into it, instructing all units to converge on Beaver Dam. "Cover all roads between here and Midford," he concluded. "They'll have to take one of them."

"Maybe waiting it out wasn't such a good idea," Illya suggested as the Thrush disappeared back into the crowd.

"We're all right as long as they don't decide to look in the wrong tent," Napoleon replied. "Incidentally, which way is Midford from here?"

Illya shrugged. "I wasn't paying attention to direction, just distance. We'll have to look it up on a map, I suppose." He looked around as they reentered the milling crowd. "But there's no rush. Let's wait till Thrush has run itself out. As long as we're here, let's not pass up an opportunity to find out what a Muck Crop Festival is. It's part of our national heritage."

Napoleon declined to comment on a national heritage that would include something called a Muck Crop Festival. After a half hour, the only thing that had attracted his attention favorably was a grandstand full of girls in bathing suits. A leather-lunged announcer was shouting to all and sundry that the final judging for the Muck Queen was about to begin.

"If this weren't a wholesome Midwestern town, I'd be suspicious," Napoleon commented. "Just what is muck, anyway, that it gets to have a festival and a queen all to itself?"

"A kind of soil," Illya said. "Very rich, but highly unpleasant to work with. Like glue when it's wet, but it grows great crops. It's similar to having a Peat Bog Festival and electing a Miss Peat Bog, I suppose."

Napoleon still looked dubious. "Probably all part of a Thrush scheme," he remarked darkly. "Speaking of which, don't you think pursuit has passed us by? If it's going to, that is?"

"We should give them a little longer, but it won't hurt to check all the streets leading out of town while were waiting."