Piers Anthony - Mer-Cycle

Don took off. But Pacifa was already out of sight, lost in the vague dark background wash that was the deep ocean at dawn. There were not tire tracks, of course. It was hopeless.

“Fool woman,” he muttered.

“Whistle for her,” Melanie called. He hadn’t realized that she was following him, and indeed she wasn’t very close, but it was a good suggestion. He blew his whistle.

Pacifa answered at once, just a short distance to the side. “Are you lost, young man?” she inquired solicitously as he drew up to her.

“No. You are—were. Wait for the rest of us!”

“Why?”

“W-we have to operate as a p-party,” he said, annoyed.

“I’m glad that’s settled. Let’s get on with it.”

They returned to find Gaspar and Eleph poring over the paper held before one headlight. Gaspar lifted his bike and spun a wheel by hand when the headlight began to fade, to keep the light bright. There were a number of sections of the map, each overlapping the boundaries of the next, so that they could travel from one to another without interruption. It looked to Don as if the entire Gulf of Mexico was covered, and perhaps more.

Gaspar looked up. “It’s in an American explosives dumping area,” he said.

“A what?” Pacifa demanded. “That can’t be right.”

“It’s the location Melanie gave us,” Gaspar said evenly. “Got any other?”

“Do I understand correctly?” Eleph demanded. “Must we venture into a munitions dump?”

“I have no knowledge of munitions dumps,” Pacifa said. “I don’t know anything about undersea coordinates either. It does seem strange, but if they want to keep our ultimate destination secret, this is as good a waystation as any, I suppose.”

“That must be it,” Don said. “For some reason they don’t want us to know our mission any sooner than we have to. But it must be far enough away so we’ll have to reload on supplies.” He would be glad to get good rations to replace his bad ones; so far there had been plenty for the others to share with him, but it made him feel as if he wasn’t carrying his own weight.

“But an explosives dump!” Gaspar said.

“Can’t hurt us,” Don reminded him. “We’re out of phase.”

“I’m not so sure about that. Our weight is still real, and if we were to ride over an old live depth bomb—”

“They do not dump that way,” Eleph said. “Those weapons are sealed in.”

“How do you know?”

Eleph hesitated. “I have had military experience.”

So there was a military background, Don thought. That explained the man’s military bearing and attitude. But it still didn’t explain his presence here.

“Probably it was easier to dump supplies on a regular run,” Gaspar said after a moment, evidently not wishing to appear unduly negative. “But it’s a good three hundred and fifty miles from here. And if that’s only half way to our goal—”

“Our goal may be even farther,” Don said. “Because we’ve been riding back and forth with our initial supplies.”

“Of which we still have plenty,” Melanie said. “Even sharing.”

“Sharing?” Pacifa inquired alertly.

“Don’s are bad,” Melanie explained. “We don’t know if it’s poor quality control or what.”

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