As soon as the car was moving Chandler felt himself able to move his lips again.
"I," he said. "I don't know—"
"Friend," said the policeman, "kindly keep your mouth shut. 'South Gate,' the exec said, and South Gate is where I'm going."
Chandler shrugged and looked out the window ... just in time to see the jet that had brought him to the islands once more lumbering into life. It crept, wobbling its wingtips, over the ground, picked up speed, roared across taxi strips and over rough ground and at last piled up against an ungainly looking foreign airplane, a Russian jet by its markings, in a thunderous crash and ball of flame as its fuel exploded. No one got out.
It seemed that traffic to Hawaii was all one way.
VI
They roared through downtown Honolulu with the siren blaring and cars scattering out of the way. At seventy miles an hour they raced down a road by the sea. Chandler caught a glimpse of a sign that said "Hilo," but where or what "Hilo" might be he had no idea. Soon there were fewer cars; then there were none but their own.
The road was a surburban highway lined with housing development, shopping centers, palm groves and the occasional center of a small municipality, scattering helterskelter together. There was a road like this extending in every direction from every city in the United States, Chandler thought; but this one was somewhat altered. Something had been there before them. About a mile outside Honolulu's outer fringe, life was cut off as with a knife. There were no people on foot, and the only cars were rusted wrecks lining the roads. The lawns were ragged stands of weeds in front of the ranch-type homes.
It was evidently not allowed to live here.