held, across his lap, at the ready, a shotgun. He wasnât driving. He was âriding shotgun.â And here am I riding shotgun for you, so that you can concentrate on your driving, secure in the knowledge that if any bad guys come galloping up beside us with evil intentâI will scare them away with the handsome leather folder of maps that I have lying across my lap, at the ready.â
âThatâs my guy,â she said.
What I hadnât told her, what I am telling her only now, in this sentence, on this page, is that the guy riding shotgun for her was on the alert for signs of flyguys in the sky, and if he saw them in the rearview mirror or heard the ominous sound of their blades chopping the air, he meant to use his handsome leather book of maps to suggest evasive actionâa sudden side trip to someplace hard to spot from the air. He would insist. If necessary, he would plead. If it came to that, he would take the wheel.
Chapter 5
Once Bitten
Ladies and gentlemen,⦠I ⦠hardly know where to begin, to paint for you a word picture of the strange scene before my eyes â¦
Carl Phillips, radio commentator, in Howard Kochâs adaptation of H. G. Wellsâs The War of the Worlds
THE DAY WAS NEARLY PERFECT for traveling: clear and cool and still. As I pulled onto the road, my heart was full of the mad hope that Spirit might on this promising day take to the air and fly me to my next stop.
âLetâs go, Spirit, â I coaxed her. âLetâs rise up, leave the hard pavement below us, and soar into the clear, cool air. Come on, letâs go!â
âOh, please,â she said with a yawn.
âWhatâs the matter?â
âItâs so early.â
âBut itâs such a wonderful morning. Donât you feel the urge to get up and go?â
âNot at all. Iâm still tired from yesterday. All that traveling! Iâve never done anything like that in my life.â
âNo,â I said, reluctantly admitting the truth of it, âI guess you havenât.â
âCouldnât we just take it easy today and kind of glide along at a nice easy pace? On the ground?â
âOkay,â I said, but I didnât try to hide my disappointment.
âIf I have an easy day today, I might be able to get up into the air tomorrow.â
âIf youâre making a bargain, Iâm going to hold you to it,â I said.
âOf course. Iâm an aerocycle of my word.â
So, off we went, at an easy pace. I realize now, in retrospect, that, for the sake of my account, I should have stopped one night in Manhattan. If I had, this chapter might have included some Manhattan adventures. At the time, though, the city seemed an obstacle that stood in the way of my real journey and my real adventure, which lay beyond New York, in the West, so I pushed on through without stopping at all, and we traveled without adventures for the entire day, pleasantly and uneventfully, if slowly, stopping once for gas, and once for lunch, and briefly now and then so that I could stretch my legs and she could rest, until we found ourselves deep in New Jersey, late in the afternoon.
As the shadows began to lengthen and I began to turn my thoughts to dinner, I began to feel that something was odd, though I wasnât quite sure what made me feel that way.
â Spirit, â I whispered, âthereâs something strange going on.â
âWhat?â
âI donât knowâitâs hard to put into wordsâIâve just got a strange feeling.â
âYouâre not giving me much to go on.â
âWell, it feels as if people are watching meâwatching us.â
âI suppose it isnât every day that a kid comes flying through these parts on a graceful and gorgeous aerocycle. Of course people are watching.â
âYeah, but this is more likeâsurveillance.â
âYouâve seen too