at the St. Louis
dead area extends upward in some places as high as thirteen thousand
feet.

The only thing missing was some device or doodad that would let us use
our perception or telepathy in this deadness while they couldn't. As it
was, we were as psi-blind as they were, so we had to go along the
streets with our eyes carefully peeled for cars of questionable
ownership. We saw some passenger cars with out-of-state licenses and
gave them wide clearances. One of them hung on our tail until I
committed a very neat coup by running through a stoplight and
sandwiching my car between two whopping big fourteen-wheel moving vans.
I'd have enjoyed the expression on the driver's face if I could have
seen it. But then we were gone and he was probably cussing.

I stayed between the vans as we wound ourselves along the road and
turned into a side street.

I stayed between them too long.

Because the guy in front slammed on his air-brakes and the big van came
to a stop with a howl of tires on concrete. The guy behind did not even
slow down. He closed in on us like an avalanche. I took a fast look
around and fought the wheel of my car to turn aside, but he whaled into
my tail and we went sliding forward. I was riding my brakes but the mass
of that moving van was so great that my tires just wore flats on the
pavement-side.

We were bearing down on that stopped van and it looked as though we were
going to be driving a very tall car with a very short wheelbase in a
very short time.

Then the whole back panel of the front van came tumbling towards me from
the top, pivoting on a hinge at the bottom, making a fine ramp. The van
behind me nudged us up the ramp and we hurtled forward against a thick,
resilient pad that stopped my car without any damage either to the car
or to the inhabitants.

Then the back panel closed up and the van took off.

Two big birds on each side opened the doors of our car simultaneously
and said "Out!"

The tall guy on my side gave me a cocksure smile and the short guy said,
"We're about to leave St. Louis on U.S. 40, Cornell. I hope you won't
find this journey too rough."

I started to take a swing, but the tall one caught my elbow and threw me
off balance. The short one reached down and picked up a baseball bat.
"Use this, Cornell," he told me. "Then no one will get hurt."

I looked at the pair of them, and then gave up. There are odd characters
in this world who actually enjoy physical combat a