Death Wave Read Free Page B

ringing.”
    â€œOkay. Say hello to Gina for me.”
    â€œSure. Whyn’t you come over here sometime and see us? The kids’d love to see their Uncle Hambone.”
    Hamilton forced a grin. “Sure. Soon’s I get the chance. Got a three-day weekend coming up; maybe then.”
    â€œGood. See ya then.”
    â€œYeah.”
    Hamilton cut the connection and the wall screen went back to the World Cup. He leaned back on the sofa once more, thinking, Those damned star travelers. They get rich, they get to block traffic, they make us feel like little insects.
    But he didn’t really feel like an insect. He felt like a man, a man who had somehow been left behind. A man who was filled with a growing, simmering resentment.

 
    TAOS, NEW MEXICO
    Once-sleepy Taos was booming, thanks to the government housing construction that was changing the face of the desert. The city’s airport was expanding to accommodate the loads of materials and construction workers being ferried in daily from all across the country. Jumpjet cargo carriers lowered themselves on roaring streams of hot exhaust gases along the airfield’s perimeter aprons, while bigger jetliners bored in to land on the newly extended runways, then raised their hinged noses to allow trucks full of men and materials to trundle out.
    Rocketplanes were still fairly rare at the Taos airport, but the security people who escorted Jordan Kell and his wife had requisitioned one for them. Local workers and travelers gaped at the sleek, swept-wing craft as it took off like an ordinary airplane, then fired its rocket engines to arrow it high above the atmosphere. In little more than a half hour the plane was gliding in for a landing at Chicago’s sprawling Banks Aerospaceport.
    A blank-faced team of World Council security agents guided them to an unmarked door. Outside, a sleek, low-slung limousine was waiting for Jordan and Aditi, with still more security people positioned around it. The two of them ducked inside, and the limo pulled away from the curb.
    It was an air-cushion vehicle, and Jordan felt some alarm when the driver accelerated past the teeming highway traffic in a special lane reserved for government and emergency vehicles.
    The security woman driving for them seemed as happy as a fighter jock as she blasted past the wheeled cars at blurring speed. Jordan saw that there were separate lanes for private automobiles, and still others for trucks and buses.
    â€œWe don’t touch the roadway,” their driver was bragging. “Wheels up, jets blasting, and away we go straight downtown, past all these dawdlers!”
    Jordan wondered what would happen if a private car tried to cut into the restricted government lane. Can’t happen, he told himself. Those private vehicles are controlled by the traffic management system: everything kept safe and orderly. Humans don’t drive their own vehicles anymore—except for this speed-happy would-be jet jockey.
    There were no safety belts. The driver assured them that they weren’t needed. “This car’s equipped with energy screens that’ll protect you from anything,” she assured her passengers.
    â€œReally?” asked Jordan. He pushed both hands into the seemingly empty air in front of him and, sure enough, felt a slightly spongy resistance.
    â€œEven a full-speed head-on collision!” the driver enthused.
    Trying to put the picture of a high-speed crash out of his mind, Jordan turned to Aditi, who was sitting beside him, looking equally tense.
    â€œIt’ll be good to see Mitch again.”
    â€œYes,” she agreed, her eyes flicking at the cars they were passing. “And Paul.”
    Mitchell Thornberry and Paul Longyear were the only others who had returned from New Earth with Jordan and Aditi. Jordan’s brother, Brandon, and the rest of the eleven scientists had elected to remain and continue their studies of the world that had been