Part 7 (2/2)

He went on and on and on like any bureaucrat. I was glad we were in a dead area because he'd have thrown me out of his office for what I was thinking.

Eventually Mr. Houghton ran down and I left.

I toyed around with the idea of barging in on the main office of the company but I figured that might be too much like poking my head into a hornet's nest.

I pocketed the card he gave me from the company, and I studied the ink-fresh road map, which he had proudly supplied. It pointed out in a replica panel of the fancy signs, that the State of Ohio was beautifying their highways with these new signs at no increased cost to the taxpayer, and that the dates in green on the various highways here and there gave the dates when the new signs would be installed. The bottom of the panel gave the Road Commissioner's name in boldface with Houghton's name below in slightly smaller print.

I smiled. Usually I get mad at signs that proclaim that such and such a tunnel is being created by Mayor So-and-so, as if the good mayor were out there with a shovel and hoe digging the tunnel. But this sort of thing would have been a worthy cause if it hadn't been for the sinister side.

I selected a highway that had been completed toward Cincinnati and made my way there with no waste of time.

The road was new and it was another beaut. The signs led me on, mile after mile and sign after sign.

I did not know what I was following, and I was not sure I knew what I was looking for. But I was on the trail of something and a bit of activity, both mental and physical, after weeks of blank-wall frustration made my spirits rise and my mental equipment sharper. The radio in the car was yangling with hillbilly songs, the only thing you can pick up in Ohio, but I didn't care. I was looking for something significant.

I found it late in the afternoon about half-way between Dayton and Cincinnati. One of the spokes was missing.

Fifty yards ahead was a crossroad.

I hauled in with a whine of rubber and brakes, and sat there trying to reason out my next move by logic. Do I turn with the missing spoke, or do I turn with the one that is not missing?

Memory came to my aid. The ”ten o'clock” spoke had been missing back there near the Harrison farm. The Harrisons had lived on the left side of the highway. One follows the missing spoke. Here the ”two o'clock”

spoke was missing, so I turned to the right along the crossroad until I came to another sign that was complete.

Then, wondering, I U-turned and drove back across the main highway and drove for about five miles watching the signs as I went. The ones on my right had that trefoil emblem upside down. The ones on my left were right side up. The difference was so small that only someone who knew the significance would distinguish one from the other. So far as I could reason out, it meant that what I sought was in the other direction. When the emblem was upside down I was going away from, and when right side up, I was going toward.

Away from or toward what?

I U-turned again and started following the signs.

Twenty miles beyond the main highway where I'd seen the sign that announced the turn, I came upon another missing spoke. This indicated a turn to the left, and so I slowed down until I came upon a homestead road leading off toward a farmhouse.

I turned, determined to make like a man lost and hoping that I'd not b.u.mp into a telepath.

A few hundred yards in from the main road I came upon a girl who was walking briskly toward me. I stopped. She looked at me with a quizzical smile and asked me if she could be of any help.

Brashly, I nodded. ”I'm looking for some old friends of mine,” I said.

”Haven't seen them for years. Named Harrison.”

She smiled up at me. ”I don't know of any Harrison around here.” Her voice had the Ohio tw.a.n.g.

”No?”

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