Stern picked himself up from the gravel at the side of the road and looked at the car. It was empty. It looked like any Terrestrial automobile. As he stood up, he heard a faint voice over the radio.
"... too bad that he wasn't in the focus of the ray...."
There was no more.
He knew, then, what had happened. Skardoth had had a voice pickup in the car. As soon as he had heard a confession from both of them, Skardoth had used a built-in transport field.
Stern stood there for a moment, looking at the empty car. He'd been lucky; if the transport field hadn't hit Elizabeth squarely, she would have been completely disintegrated. As it was, Elizabeth had been caught in the field, but Stern had not. She had been transported to wherever the field focus was located, and Skardoth assumed that John Stern had been half in and half out of the field, and had been dissipated into nothingness.
Stern grinned. That had been Matt Skardoth's last mistake.
State Patrol Car 331, cruising along the Montauk-Manhattan highway, spotted a lone figure standing at the side of the road. He raised his hands and flagged them down.
Sergeant Riley applied the brakes and slowed down. His partner, Patrolman Garetti, eased his .38 out of its holster. It wasn't likely that the man who was flagging them down was dangerous, but there was no use taking a chance. Patrol Car 331 slowed to a stop.
Sergeant Riley leaned out of the car window.
"What seems to be the trouble?" he asked.