I nodded. "I'll give you an authorization dated tomorrow—if you'll give me your gun first. You might just accidentally happen to kill me after getting that paper from me, considering how important you think it is to get the Fleet here fast, and how sure you are that I'll be trapped."
Jones looked startled, and then sheepish, and gave me the gun without comment. I wrote out the paper he wanted, and then strolled up the path past the marker. It didn't look any different on the other side. It went straight into the forbidden area, and I do mean straight. It went on without the slightest sign of a turn, as far as the eye could see, and there were no cross trails anywhere along it.
I stepped out at a good swift pace, striding along it long after Jones disappeared from view behind me. I saw no signs of Aliens; I saw no signs of anything unusual at all, until, about two hours after I started, I saw a marker in the distance ahead of me. Jones was sitting on the snow, just on the other side of the tree with the marker on it. I strolled up toward him, crossed the invisible line, hiked up my kilt to keep it from getting damp, and sat down on the soft snow beside him.
"Hello," he said non-committally. "You made pretty good time. In fact, that's a new record for the course."
"Then I'm not the first man to take that walk?" I asked.
"Nope. Just the fastest. I'm glad you didn't try to turn around and come back along the path. That way, you'd have gotten lost. Well, shall we go back to the camp and call in the Navy?"
"No, I'm going back in," I said calmly.
He waved one gloved hand at me. "It's your funeral," he said. "Or what amounts to the same thing, anyway."
I stood up, dusted off the snow where some of it had stuck to me, and settled my kilt into as fashionable a manner as was possible. I crossed the line and started down the trail again, just as I had before, but this time I didn't follow my eyes. Soon after losing sight of Mr. Jones, I cut sharply off the clearly visible trail to the right and started to weave my way through a thicket of the ice trees.