character got up, went to the cashier and paid for our
breakfast as well as his own. He took off in his car and I have never
seen him since.

Farrow looked at me, her face white and her whole attitude one of
fright. "U.S. 40," she said in a shaky voice, "runs like a stretched
string from St. Louis to Indianapolis."

She didn't have to tell me any more. About sixty miles North of
Indianapolis on Indiana State Highway 37 lies the thriving metropolis of
Marion, Indiana, the most important facet of which (to Farrow and me) is
an establishment called the Medical Research Center.

Nothing was going to make me drive out of St. Louis along U.S. 40.
Period; End of message; No answer required.

Nothing, because I was very well aware of their need to collect me alive
and kicking. If I could not roar out of St. Louis in the direction I
selected, I was going to turn my car end for end and have at them. Not
in any mild manner, but with deadly intent to do deadly damage. If I'd
make a mild pass, they'd undoubtedly corral me by main force and carry
me off kicking and screaming. But if I went at them to kill or get
killed, they'd have to move aside just to prevent me from killing
myself. I didn't think I'd get to the last final blow of that
self-destruction. I'd win through.

So we left the diner after a breakfast on our enemy's expense account
and took off again.

I was counting on St. Louis. The center of the old city is one big
shapeless blob of a dead area; so nice and cold that St. Louis has
reversed the usual city-type blight area growth. Ever since Rhine, the
slum sections have been moving out and the new buildings have been
moving in. So with the dead area and the brand-new, wide streets and
fancy traffic control, St. Louis was the place to go in along one road,
get lost in traffic, and come out, roaring along any road desirable. I
could not believe that any outfit, hoping to work under cover, could
collect enough manpower and cars to block every road, lane, highway and
duckrunway that led out of a city as big as St. Louis.

Again they hazed us by pacing along parallel roads and behind us with
the open end of their crescent aimed along U.S. 67. We went like hell;
without slowing a bit we sort of swooped up to St. Louis and took a fast
dive into that big blob-shaped dead area. We wound up in traffic and
tied Boy Scout knots in our course. I was concerned about overhead
coverage from a 'copter even though I've been told th