Highways in Hiding

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  HIGHWAYS IN HIDING

  GEORGE O. SMITH

  A LANCER BOOK 1967

  Copyright 1956 by George O. Smith_Highways in Hiding_ is based upon material originally copyrighted byGreenleaf Publishing Co., 1955.

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 56-10457Printed in the U.S.A._Cover painting by Roy G. Krenkel_

  LANCER BOOKS, INC., 185 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10016

  [Transcriber's note: This is a rule 6 clearance. PG has not been ableto find a U.S. copyright renewal.]

  _For my drinking uncle DON and, of course MARIAN_

  _Historical Note_

  In the founding days of Rhine Institute the need arose for a newpunctuation mark which would indicate on the printed page that thepassage was of mental origin, just as the familiar quotation marksindicate that the words between them were of verbal origin. Accordingly,the symbol # was chosen, primarily because it appears on everytypewriter.

  Up to the present time, the use of the symbol # to indicate directedmental communication has been restricted to technical papers, termtheses, and scholarly treatises by professors, scholars, and students oftelepathy.

  Here, for the first time in any popular work, the symbol # is used tosignify that the passage between the marks was mental communication.

  Steve Cornell, _M. Ing._

  STALEMATE

  Macklin said, "Please put that weapon down, Mr. Cornell. Let's not addattempted murder to your other crimes."

  "Don't force me to it, then," I told him.

  But I knew I couldn't do it. I hated them all. I wanted the wholeHighways in Hiding rolled up like an old discarded carpet, with everyMekstrom on Earth rolled up in it. But I couldn't pull the trigger. Thesurvivors would have enough savvy to clean up the mess before our bodiesgot cold, and the Highways crowd would be doing business at the same oldstand. Without, I might add, the minor nuisance that people call SteveCornell.

  What I really wanted was to find Catherine.

  And then it came to me that what I really wanted second of all was topossess a body of Mekstrom Flesh, to be a physical superman....

  I

  I came up out of the blackness just enough to know that I was no longerpinned down by a couple of tons of wrecked automobile. I floated on softsheets with only a light blanket over me.

  I hurt all over like a hundred and sixty pounds of boil. My right armwas numb and my left thigh was aching. Breathing felt like being stabbedwith rapiers and the skin of my face felt stretched tight. There was abandage over my eyes and the place was as quiet as the grave. But I knewthat I was not in any grave because my nose was working just barely wellenough to register the unmistakable pungent odor that only goes withhospitals.

  I tried my sense of perception, but like any delicate and criticalsense, perception was one of the first to go. I could not dig out beyonda few inches. I could sense the bed and the white sheets and that wasall.

  Some brave soul had hauled me out of that crack-up before the fuel tankwent up in the fire. I hope that whoever he was, he'd had enough senseto haul Catherine out of the mess first. The thought of living withoutCatherine was too dark to bear, and so I just let the blackness closedown over me again because it cut out all pain, both physical andmental.

  The next time I awoke there was light and a pleasant male voice saying,"Steve Cornell. Steve, can you hear me?"

  I tried to answer but no sound came out. Not even a hoarse croak.

  The voice went on, "Don't try to talk, Steve. Just think it."

  #Catherine?# I thought sharply, because most medicos are telepath, notperceptive.

  "Catherine is all right," he replied.

  #Can I see her?#

  "Lord no!" he said quickly. "You'd scare her half to death the way youlook right now."

  #How bad off am I?#

  "You're a mess, Steve. Broken ribs, compound fracture of the left tibia,broken humerus. Scars, mars, abrasions, some flashburn and post-accidentshock. And if you're interested, not a trace of Mekstrom's Disease."

  #Mekstrom's Disease--?# was my thought of horror.

  "Forget it, Steve. I always check for it because it's been my specialty.Don't worry."

  #Okay. So how long have I been here?#

  "Eight days."

  #Eight days? Couldn't you do the usual job?#

  "You were pretty badly ground up, Steve. That's what took the time. Now,suppose you tell me what happened?"

  #Catherine and I were eloping. Just like most other couples do sinceRhine Institute made it difficult to find personal privacy. Then wecracked up.#

  "What did it?" asked the doctor. "Perceptives like you usually sensedanger before you can see it."

  #Catherine called my attention to a peculiar road sign, and I sent myperception back to take another dig. We hit the fallen limb of a treeand went over and over. You know the rest.#

  "Bad," said the doctor. "But what kind of a sign would call yourinterest so deep that you didn't at least see the limb, even if you wereperceiving the sign?"

  #Peculiar sign,# I thought. Ornamental wrought iron gizmo with curlicuesand a little decorative circle that sort of looks like the Boy Scouttenderfoot badge suspended on three spokes. One of the spokes werebroken away; I got involved because I was trying to guess whether it hadbeen shot away by some vandal who missed the central design.Then--blooie!#

  "It's really too bad, Steve. But you'll be all right in a while."

  #Thanks, doctor. Doctor? Doctor--?#

  "Sorry, Steve. I forget that everybody is not telepath like I am. I'mJames Thorndyke."

  Much later I began to wake up again, and with better clarity of mind, Ifound that I could extend my esper as far as the wall and through thedoor by a few inches. It was strictly hospital all right; sere white andstainless steel as far as my esper could reach.

  In my room was a nurse, rustling in starched white. I tried to speak,croaked once, and then paused to form my voice.

  "Can--I see--How is--? Where is?" I stopped again, because the nurse wasprobably as esper as I was and required a full sentence to get thethought behind it. Only a telepath like the doctor could have followedmy jumbled ideas. But the nurse was good. She tried:

  "Mr. Cornell? You're awake!"

  "Look--nurse--"

  "Take it easy. I'm Miss Farrow. I'll get the doctor."

  "No--wait. I've been here eight days--?"

  "But you were badly hurt, you know."

  "But the doctor. He said that she was here, too."

  "Don't worry about it, Mr. Cornell."

  "But he said that she was not badly hurt."

  "She wasn't."

  "Then why was--is--she here so long?"

  Miss Farrow laughed cheerfully. "Your Christine is in fine shape. She isstill here because she wouldn't leave until you were well out of danger.Now stop fretting. You'll see her soon enough."

  Her laugh was light but strained. It sounded off-key because it was asoff-key as a ten-yard-strip of baldfaced perjury. She left in a hurryand I was able to esper as far as outside the door, where she leanedback against the wood and began to cry. She was hating herself becauseshe had blown her lines and she knew that I knew it.

  And Catherine had never been in this hospital, because if she had beenbrought in with me, the nurse would have known the right name.

  Not that it mattered to me now, but Miss Farrow was no esper or she'dhave dug my belongings and found Catherine's name on the license. MissFarrow was a telepath; I'd not called my girl by name, only by anaffectionate mental image.