They drove away.

Red Canyon was eighty miles from the Shed, and the only way to get there
was through Bootstrap, because the only highway away from the Shed led
to that small, synthetic town. It was irritating, though they had no
schedule, to find that the long line of busses was ahead of them on that
twenty-mile stretch. The busses ran nose to tail and filled the road for
a half-mile or more. It was not possible to pass so long a string of
close-packed vehicles. There was just enough traffic in the opposite
direction to make that impracticable.

They had to trail the line of busses as far as Bootstrap and crawl
through the crowded streets. Once beyond the town they came to a
security stop. Here Sally's pass was good. Then they went rolling on and
on through an empty, arid, sun-baked terrain toward the hills to the
west. It looked remarkably lonely. Joe thought for the first time about
gas. He looked carefully at the fuel gauge. Sally shook her head.

"Don't worry. Plenty of gas. Security takes care of that. When I said
where we were going and that I wanted the car, Dad had everything
checked. If I live through this, I'll bet I stay a fanatic about
cautiousness all my life!"

Joe said distastefully: "I suppose it gets everybody. Mike--the midget,
you know--called me back just now to suggest that the people who tried
to spoil the gyros might try to harm the four of us to hinder their
repair!"

"It's not just foolishness," Sally admitted. "The strain is pretty bad,
especially when you know things. You've noticed that Dad's getting gray.
That's strain. And Miss Ross is about as tense. Things leak out in the
most remarkable way--and Dad can't find out how. Once there was a case
of sabotage and he could have sworn that nobody had the information that
permitted it but himself and Miss Ross. She had hysterics. She insisted
that she wanted to be locked up somewhere so she couldn't be suspected
of telling anybody anything. She'd resign tomorrow if she could. It's
ghastly." Then she hesitated and smiled faintly: "In fact, so Dad
wouldn't worry about me this afternoon----"

He took his eyes off the road to glance at her.

"What?"

"I promised we wouldn't go swimming and----" Then she said awkwardly:
"There are two pistols in the glove compartment. Dad knows you. So I
promised you'd put one in your pocket up at the lake."

Joe drew a deep breath. She opened the glove compartment and handed him
a pistol. He looked at it