ack and white
diagonals and by the little sentry hut half hidden behind the other car
that it marked the frontier. A man with a rifle on his shoulder stood
there. They drew up to it fast, but his foot automatically eased up on
the floorboard pedal until the girl spoke sharply.

"Right through it, Sweetheart."

In the rear-view mirror he saw her leaning forward, her face tense.

In a moment it would be time to stop, if he were going to.

_Paul Asher hesitated a moment. Then he too leaned forward, the band
pressing into his chest. He was breathing heavily. There was an almost
inaudible click._

He trod on the accelerator. He had a glimpse of the guard unslinging his
rifle from his shoulder and of another man running toward the parked car
as his vehicle smashed into the flimsy gate and sent it, cracked and
splintered, to the side of the road. He fought the slight wrench of the
wheel and sped on. He thought he heard a shot.

"Nice work," the girl said. She seemed to be appraising him as she
looked at him. "My name, incidentally, is Naomi."

"Hello," he heard himself saying as he whipped the car around a curve
that hid the frontier behind a hill. "You seem to know who I am."

"That I do," she said.

"Then why don't you call me by my name, instead of 'Sweetheart'?"

"That's because I like you, Sweetheart." She was looking out the rear
window. "Now just step on the gas, because we've got company."

The car that had been parked near the sentry hut was whipping into view
around the curve. It was lighter than his, but it was fast, too. He
stepped on it.

* * * * *

Now the road had become narrow and twisting. The grade was steep but the
surface was good. Abruptly, it entered a forest.

The girl said: "Two more curves. Then you'll see a field and a barn. Off
the road and into the barn, fast."

He took the curves with rubber screaming and almost without braking sent
the car bumping across the field and into the barn. It was bigger than
it had seemed from the outside. As he brought the car to a lurching halt
the barn door closed.

Where he had expected to see stalls and milking machines and hay he saw
an expanse of metal floor and monstrous machinery. The barn door which
had been a rickety wooden slab from the outside was a gleaming sheet of
metal from the inside. It glided silently shut and left no joint or seam
to show where there had been an opening.

"Out," said Naomi.

As th