"Just like on TV," Sam said, grinning.
"I hope we get the car out of there pretty soon," Jack said anxiously. He glanced out toward the silent garage. "I always wonder what would happen if the machinery stuck, or something. How would you ever get your car out?"
"It doesn't get stuck," Sam said. A peculiar look crossed his face as he added, "Not any more."
"Did it ever?"
Sam shrugged. "Oh, well, you know twenty or thirty years ago all this automatic stuff wasn't quite so good as it is now. Cars, repair shops ... things went wrong, sometimes. Like ... like the Traveler."
"The Traveler?" The woman looked up. "Oh, that's just a ghost story. Like the Flying Dutchman. Isn't it?"
The lunchroom was completely silent. Sam was no longer paying any attention to the couple sitting at the counter. He was close to the big window, standing stiffly, feet apart, like an admiral on a ship's bridge, his eyes studying the empty horizon. There, where the lines of the road met with the precision of a drawing-board exercise in perspective, he thought he saw a fleck of light.
"It isn't when it goes past," Sam said, in a quiet tight voice. He talked at the window, his back to the other two, his words meant mostly for himself.
"It's not its going by. That doesn't bother me," he repeated. "It came by my old place five or six times, I remember. That's why I finally asked to be transferred out here, where it hardly ever goes by. But I could have gotten used to it. I mean, you don't have to look at it, or anything. It's just another car. Old, sure, but there's no difference. A car goes by, that's all. Only...."
"You mean it's real?" the woman asked, in a low voice.