Mel looked worried.“Could we retarget your return so you aren’t delivered straight to them.”
“I’m not sure we could find it from the outside,” Rita said, her lips pursing as she considered the idea.
“But if landed close, surely…” Jack’s brows arched.
“I don’t know,” Rita said.“I’ve never seen it from the outside.”
Mel seemed to be thinking and Rita did some of her own thinking.Finally she looked at the devices.
“I wonder if we could tell from one of those?”
She could tell it had been opened.That made it easier for her to poke around inside.But did she have the skills to figure it out?She’d mostly concentrated on being able to fix it.
“You could do that?”It was Mel’s turn to look and sound skeptical.
Rita didn’t blame her.
“I may have done some unapproved examinations of the tech from time to time.”She looked at them as if they might condemn her.“They were asking me to take it on on trust—but then had us sign stuff absolving them of all responsibility if something went wrong.”She half shrugged.“So I wanted to make sure my stuff worked.Or I could fix it myself.I didn’t want to get eaten by a dinosaur or something because that thing malfunctioned.”
“They send people there?”Con didn’t look happy.
“No,” Rita admitted, “but their disclaimers talk about unintended destinations.Sun spots and things,” she added vaguely.
“And you still did it?”Jack shook his head.He smiled at Mel.“You and she could be related.”
Rita found the remark interesting and wished they trusted her enough to tell her what it meant.
Her gaze met Mel’s and she saw both acceptance and regret.
“Of course, you can’t,” Rita said, as if Mel had spoken out loud.
“They are waiting for you, looking for you,” Mel said.“Even if you did manage to adjust the devices…”
Rita finished the sentence for her, “…they could find out what I know.”She gave a slight shudder at the memory of her lie detector test.If they’d asked the right questions?She’d have talked.
“The basic idea isn’t bad,” Jack said.“When Ty and Alice are back…”
So they were gone, not just missing the meeting.Where—she had a thought and lowered her lashes against giving it away.Could they have gone to Wyoming to see if they could track down that signal?It would have been fun to go with them, but she had a feeling she wasn’t getting out of this silo anytime soon.
Wyoming, 2023
Ty had worried that they’d stick out like sore thumbs in the RV—that had for some reason been named “Goose”—but as soon as they’d turned onto a main road, they’d found themselves in an increasing flow of recreation vehicles, some larger than theirs, a few smaller.
Now he remembered cursing them when he’d been caught behind one.Now he was the one.He could feel the cursing from the car stuck behind them.
What he hadn’t expected was to like driving the RV.The big wide window gave him an almost panoramic view of the desert as they left the garage where it had been stored—and its safety—behind.
This was a different kind of safety, he’d realized.A sort of obvious anonymity.
The wide variety of camper types at their first stop had left them both a little wide-eyed.They also found out that if they wanted to blend in, that meant being friendly—something they both struggled with.
Their RV was dull enough on the outside—and an equally dull inside since all the good stuff had been built into hidden compartments that would have made James Bond drool with envy—that the people who wandered by could poke their heads in the door and decide it wasn’t cool enough for a tour.
Ty and Alice saw others pulling out their lawn chairs and getting comfortable in their little “front yards,” so they did the same.Somehow they even managed to chat with anyone who stopped by.
Ty would have been in trouble but Alice had done her research and could talk knowledgeably about the various RV models and even about possible camps and sites he knew neither of them had visited.
One of the men—his shirt and shorts clashing garishly—nodded toward Ty and said, “Newb?”
