Gordon R. Dickson by Time Storm

of what I
could do for her, in the way of taking care of her. In fact, the more I
thought, the more confident I was that by this time she would be ready to
indulge these little emotional lapses of mine. All I had to do was find her and
things would go well.
    —But that was something to think
about when there was time to think about it. The big question now was—should I
take the panel cross-country, south, away from the road, to find a highway or
street that would bring me to the city?
    There was really no argument about
it. I got Sunday and the girl back into the panel—they had followed me outside
and wandered after me as I stamped on the ground to make sure it would not bog
down the panel—then we got back in the truck, turned off the asphalt and headed
due south by the compass.
    It was not bad driving at all. I had
to slow down to about five to ten miles an hour; and I kept the panel in second
gear, occasionally having to shift down to low on the hills, but generally
finding it easy going. It was all up and down, a roller coaster-type of going
for about nine-tenths of a mile; and then suddenly we came up over a rise and
looked down on a lakeshore.
    It was just a strip of
whitish-brown, sandy beach. But the shallow, rather stagnant-looking water
beyond the beach stretched out as far as I could see and out of sight right and
left as well. Evidently the time storm had moved this whole area into the
northwest of the metropolitan area, pretty well blocking off access from that
direction. The problem for me now was—which way would be the shortest way round
the lake? Right or left?
    It was a toss-up. I squinted in both
directions but for some reason, just while I had been standing there, a haze of
some sort seemed to have moved in, so that I could not see far out on the water
in any direction. Finally I chose to go to the right, because I thought I saw a
little darkness through the haze upon the sun-glare off the water and sand in
that direction. I turned the nose of the truck and we got going.
    The beach was almost as good as a
paved road to drive on. It was flat and firm. Apparently, the water adjoining
it began to shelve more sharply as we went along, for it lost its stagnant,
shallow appearance and began to develop quite a respectable surf. There was an
onshore wind blowing; but it helped the heat and the humidity only a little. We
kept driving.
    As I watched the miles add up on the
truck's odometer, I began gradually to regret not trying in the other
direction. Clearly, I had picked the long way around this body of water,
because looking ahead I could still see no end to it. When the small, clicking
figures of the odometer rolled up past the twelve mile mark, I braked the truck
to a halt, turned around and headed back.
    As I said, the beach was good
driving. I pushed our speed up to about forty, and it was not long before we
were back at the point where we had first come across the lake. I kept pounding
along; and shortly I made out something up ahead. The dazzle of sunlight from
the water seemed to have gotten in my eyes so that I could not make out exactly
what it was—something like a handkerchief-sized island with a tree, or a large
raft with a diving tower out in the water, just a little way from the beach.
But there were the black silhouettes of two-legged figures on the sand there. I
could stop to get some directions, and we could still be pulling into Swannee's
driveway in time for dinner.
    The dazzle-effect on my eyes got
worse as the panel got close to the figures; and the glitter of sunlight
through the windshield was not helping. I blinked, and blinked again. I should
have thought to pick up some dark glasses and keep them in the glove
compartment of the panel for situations like this—but I just had not expected
to run into water-glare like this. I must have been no more than thirty or
forty feet from the figures by the time I finally braked the panel to a stop
and jumped out of it on to the sand,