Runaway World

Return to Work

     Three days later, the three hab-rovers and the IceRunner left New Pennsylvania and headed out across the ice.

     "The children will be all right, won't they?" said Susan anxiously as she watched the city's ruined blast door recede behind them in one of the cockpit's monitor screens.

     "They'll be fine," Andrew reassured her. "They're hostages now. You don't hurt hostages so long as those who love them do as they're told, which we will be doing. They're probably safer than we are with a remainer still among us, wanting to sabotage the mission. I might have asked them to stay behind even if the President hadn't demanded it. No matter what happens to us, they'll be safe."

     Susan nodded her reluctant agreement. "And in return, we've got them," she said, nodding her head to where one of the New Philadelphia soldiers was watching them from the doorway, his machine gun cradled in his arms.

     "Don't mind us," the soldier said with a mocking smile. "So long as you don't try anything you can just forget we're here."

     Andrew tried to remember his name. They'd been introduced to the six soldiers back in the city's hanger but the New Londoners had still been thinking of the goodbyes they'd just made to their children and hadn't really been paying attention. Arness, that was it. James Arness. And his partner aboard their rover was called Grey. That had been his last name anyway. He couldn't remember what his first name had been.

     He tried to put them out of his mind and called the other two hab-rovers on the video link. Philip and Lungelo's faces appeared on the screen in front of him, both men looking preoccupied by the knowledge that their loved ones were still back in the city, potentially with death threats hanging over their heads. Philip at least still had Joe with him. He had insisted that he couldn't complete the work without the seventeen year old with him, and the New Philadelphians had been happy to oblige since they still had twelve year old Stacey as a hostage. Lungelo, on the other hand, had had to leave his fully adult daughter behind, with only the assurances of a couple of middle ranking officers that she wouldn't be turned into a brood mare in his absence. As a result, he was looking positively haggard and Andrew's heart went out to him.

     "Everything looking okay?" he asked them. The New Philadelphians had been all over the three rovers, looking for weapons and prodding and poking at the unfamiliar technology. The New Londoners had been worried that they might have interfered with some vital system and so they'd checked everything thoroughly before leaving. There was always the possibility that they might have missed something, though, and Andrew couldn't help but keep staring at the rover's instrument panel for any red light that might suddenly appear or any needle swinging too far away from a nominal reading.

     "All systems check out," said Philip. "Looking good so far. You okay, Lungelo?"

     "I am very far from okay," the other man replied. "However, the rover seems to be in good condition."

     "Izzy'll be okay," came another voice from the speaker, and Halona came into view, putting her arm around his shoulder. "Now that there's going to be official contact between our two cities they won't dare do anything to cause a diplomatic incident."

     Andrew nodded to himself and looked out the cockpit window where the New Philadelphia IceRunner was pulling away from them, heading in a different direction. The smaller rover had been equipped with the satellite uplink from Lungelo's rover and was heading east to where it would be able to talk to New London by means of the geostationary communications satellite.

     "Hopefully, that Icelandic volcano will have stopped erupting by now," he muttered to himself. "There's almost no chance of a solitary rover crossing the fracture zone. The Icelandic route is the only realistic chance they've got of making it."