Chapter 13

Whatever might be said in their favor, the aliens have lousy taste in interior decoration! Imagine, if you will, purple walls surrounding a red tile floor. As soon as we saw that, we did not need anything else to tell up that these guys were evil. That color scheme proved that they were even mean to themselves!

We still had not been spotted, so we decided to ride our luck as far as it would take us. We stayed in the wagon and scrunched down as much as we could, hoping to ride the wagon to wherever the gold was being stored. If we were lucky, we could then call in some help from our own timeline and hijack a lot of stolen gold, and maybe even some other stuff.

The mob of people, except for the wagon drivers and a couple of other men, filed out of the room. That's when the floor started to move. The floor slowly dropped about 60 feet to a level where there was a large section of wall missing. Our driver moved out toward the opening in the wall, and our luck still held: our wagon was the last in line.

We rode for what seemed like a couple of miles before we pulled through another door that was obviously some sort of security barrier. This put us in another room that appeared to be a vault. Gold, silver, and some other metallic bars were neatly stacked about the area. This looked like the unloading point, so Ann and I kind of oozed out of the wagon and onto the floor before we were spotted. We slipped behind an amazingly large stack of silver bars and watched the rest of the proceedings.

I wanted to get a head start on rescue for us, so I pulled out my communicator and called Lars. The connection was weak and full of static, but I was able to hear him. "Hello, Abe, have you found anything interesting, yet?"

I gave Lars a synopsis of our adventure so far and asked about transportation to and from our current location. He said that it could be done, so I suggested that he have somebody schedule six or more forklifts to come pick up as much metal as he had a place to store it. I could almost hear his eyebrows rise with that suggestion. I counted the stacks of metal and came to 97, but I could not estimate the weight of the gold, etc. that was stored in this location. I told him that I would call him back. He declined to hang up, but wanted to stay on the line with me in case of trouble. I heard Lars use his desk console to have his secretary call in somebody with forklift responsibility.

At that point, I quit listening to Lars and turned my attention to the activity going on in our room. People were dumping the gold into hoppers where it appeared to be weighed before it was transferred to another machine. In within 20 minutes, a multitude of gold bars were delivered on pallets, and forklifts were used to transfer the bars to existing stacks. It looked like this sort of activity had been going on for some time, and the workers had a steady routine that they followed.

Once the wagons were unloaded, they were driven away, and we were left with 20 or 21 workers in the combination vault and workroom. There were four guards standing equally spaced along the walls, and they were holding some sort of weapon, though I could not recognize just what it was. It looked like that if they stayed around, we were going to have to kill some people, so I hoped they left pretty soon.

I continued to give Lars a blow-by-blow account of what was going on. He stayed with me for the whole two hours it took for the workers to finish their jobs and leave. Fortunately, the guards left with them, so we could work in peace. I gave them about 10 minutes of waiting time before I told Lars to send his hijackers.

Moments later, a man showed up and introduced himself as the foreman for the hijackers. He looked around and talked for a minute or so into his communicator. Almost immediately a forklift showed up. He directed the forklift to the nearest stack of gold. As soon as that forklift was loaded, he had it transported back to headquarters and another forklift showed up. Everything was very efficient, and the room was emptied in about an hour and a half. He saluted us and disappeared.

Less than a minute later, Ann and I were transported to the conference room where Lars was waiting for us. He congratulated us on a magnificent job of theft, and we laughed over that. Lars told us that they had brought the beacon back, and, hopefully, the aliens would think that the theft was a local job. In any case, they now had a fix on the aliens' timeline and were working on ways to monitor developments there.

Lars said that they knew how much gold each of the brokers in Sacramento had lost, so they would replace it as soon as it got dark enough in town. It looked like the total haul of gold, etc. was going to run over $50 million, they still did not have an accurate weight of everything recovered. There were going to be some very pissed off aliens the next time they looked in their vault.

We didn't have any specific plans, so we jumped back to Sacramento to do a little sight seeing. I had visited Sacramento several times on my rounds as an Exhibition Shooter, so I was curious what the city was like when it first got started. Ann and I spent three days wandering around and saw everything there was to see, so we were ready to leave. The problem was, we didn't know where to go. I had drawn a blank on intuition or compulsion, so we were at loose ends.

We made a trip to San Francisco because I wanted Ann to see the ocean. She was fascinated by the harbor and the ferry trip we had made from Oakland to San Francisco. We gazed at the ocean for a while, and during that time several ships came by. Finally, she turned to me and asked, "Honey, can we take a trip on a ship out on the ocean? I have never seen anything so beautiful, and I would love to take a short trip on a ship."

"Sure we can, if that is what you want. We still have time, if you want, to go look at what is available."

We went into the city and found the booking office for the largest shipping line plying the coast of California. Actually, they had ships going as far north as Alaska and as far south as Columbia, but Ann didn't want to commit to something that would take that long. We looked over the possibilities, and she chose an excursion to Los Angeles. It was a trip of about 400 miles and would take a week, because of several intermediate stops. There was a "stateroom" available and the ship was leaving the next day, so we bought our tickets and made arrangements to be aboard the ship before 8:30 AM.

Ann was wearing her women's clothes when we boarded, so we looked like the married couple that we were on a little vacation trip. The ship was a steamer and sails combination, which meant that it was not very efficient with either mode of power, but, on the other hand, was not likely to be stuck adrift if there was a problem with the steam engine. The Lucy Ann was showing her age, but she was safe enough, especially since we could call for help from the Organization if we really got into trouble.

We pulled away from the dock with the tide at 11:23 AM. Ann was thrilled, and I admit to being excited, myself, since it had been a while since I was last at sea. We danced about all over the ship as Ann wanted to see everything that she could. Most of the crew were polite and helpful, as most men were when they were asked about their job by a beautiful young lady who was obviously interested in their answers. She was careful not to get in the way, so she was tolerated by the officers and soon adored by the crew. They put up with me, but I could tell that I was considered a necessary nuisance by one and all.