Harry talked to the bank where I had my trust fund, and got them to give me a debit card and a checkbook. He explained to me that each month I was allowed to use up to the amount of interest I had received for the month before, and no more. That way, I would never dig into the 70,000nd that were in my trust, and it would all be there when I came of age.
    I never used that much. For every newdollar I drew out of my account, I spent at least one credit from my hoard of stolen money. Most of the businesses in Tarkin were equipped to handle both kinds of money. If I spent four newdollars from my trust fund to buy a shirt, bought matching pants at another store with five credits from my stash. I told Destiny about my spending habits, and she thought it was a good idea. She started doing the same thing. But she reminded me that spending credits that slowly would never get rid of all the credits we had stolen.

*

Work on Tarkin’s spaceport continued, and people kept pouring in from the Older Planets. The Persiphone Planetary News Service (PPNS) reported in late winter (early 2485) that the known human population in the Milky Way had passed ten billion people, spread across nearly 150 Class-1 planets and 210 Class-2 planets. That was an average of 62 million on every Class-1 world, and just under five million on every Class-2 world. The Dester Mining Corporation, among others, quickly got rich when they suddenly struck uranium in the Hollis System asteroid belt. Trillionaire Michael Hubbard Cyr — owner and CEO of the Cyr Corporation — moved to Persiphone, buying the smallest of six continents from the planetary government, naming the 3 million square mile area Basplace (pronounced BOZ-plus). The scout ship McRay failed to return when scheduled; the McRay had been charting habitable solar systems, working toward the galactic core, reporting in every nine months or so.
    When Mr. Dester’s company struck it rich in our asteroid belt, his oldest son sold his half of his farm to his younger brother and joined his father, buying as many shares as he could afford — Destiny said he got the shares cheap, since he had advance notice of the strike. Mrs. Dester sold her old lorry very cheaply to some newcomers, and bought two new cars with her husband’s earnings; she got a Cyr family cruiser for herself, and a Cyr Luxury Sport for Destiny.
    For my fifteenth birthday, I got to ride in Destiny’s new car, which she’d only had for a few days. We cruised slowly through the city streets for a while, then headed out through the farms. When we got to the unpopulated area, she took the car up to a few hundred feet, and pushed its limits. I about wet my pants, watching trees, hills, rivers and wild animals pass by underneath at 1500 miles per hour.
    We were on the way back from this pleasure cruise when Destiny brought up The Subject.
    “Fun isn’t it, Phil?” She had one hand on the control wheel, and the other on the armrest.
    “Yeah”, I breathed, gripping both my arm rests. “This is the fastest I’ve ever gone in a car. It’s pretty exciting.”
    “But not as exciting as robbing banks.” She stated it as a fact, and turned to look at me, while cutting her speed and altitude.
    “You want to do another one?” I thought we had enough money to last a lifetime, if we could only convert it to newdollars, and get to some other planet. But she did have a point about the excitement; I could feel adrenaline squirting through my body just at the mention of robbing another bank.
    “Don’t you?” Her eyes smiled at me.
    “Baby, where you lead, I will follow. You are my Destiny.” I grinned back at her.
    “Hmm... Maybe we need to set this car down for a little picnic. Look for a good spot where no one will see us for an hour or so. And promise you’ll be gentle.”
    Things had smoothed out between Destiny and I, after the Billy Donovan incident. We both realized we had been behaving selfishly. I knew I didn’t want anyone else — I wasn’t even attracted to any other girls. She realized that once I finished growing up, I would be the best thing that ever happened to her.

*

The tenth grade went on as usual, five days a week, six classes a day. My mechanics class was the most fun, since we got to build our own low-powered anti-gravity motor. Our teacher, Mr. Jacobs, said that knowledge of basic mechanics was about all that was necessary to get along in the world. He said that if you could build something, or fix something, you could always find a job somewhere. But my math teacher, Mrs. Baldwin, said that was ridiculous; if you didn’t understand the math — the why — behind a machine, you could never build or fix one with any degree of accuracy.
    History was always fun, and that year we studied the Post-Exodus Expansion Period, when the 90-year Trayak war was taking place on two planets, and the Granger-Stranger wars kept resurfacing. The book said that back then almost everyone was in the military, except pregnant women. There were only 4 million humans in the entire galaxy, and it took 90 years to build that number to 15 million.
    It almost made me wish we could have a war of our own; the human race hadnt fought in almost four hundred years, except a couple of rebellions on new planets. The Kelvods — the only new race discovered in the last four hundred years — had been peaceful.
    Norman raised his hand in our history class, and asked, “What about that McRay ship, Mrs. Ballader? Do you think that maybe they found a new species out there? Maybe we’ll have a war with them.”
    She smiled, condescendingly. “Norman, I don’t really think so. There are a lot of things more dangerous than other races. It’s a lot more likely that they came out of hyperspace in the same place as an asteroid, or too close to a planet. Or maybe they’ve had some type of equipment failure, and they’ll be back as soon as it’s fixed.”
    “But what if they did find a new race?” he persisted. “Maybe something a lot less like humans than the ones we’ve found.”
    She continued smiling. “I doubt that too Norman. You see, most scientists agree with historians on that subject. The humanoid form is the only form we’ve found that is suitable for the necessities of civilization; we have the digits on our hands to work with tools and electronic equipment; we have our arms and legs for lifting, embracing, walking, running, jumping, and fighting; and we have the large cranial cavity for our superior minds. I think that maybe you’ve been reading too many of those fantasy magazines.
    “All the intelligent races we’ve encountered in our expansion have humanoid forms, with only slight variations, probably due to evolutionary differences. The Trayaks may have developed their blue skin as a survival technique, blending in with the flora on their home planet, of which a lot is blue. The Grangers and Strangers are red and green skinned for similar reasons. The Kelvods almost certainly evolved their thick hides and fur as a survival technique, millions of years ago, and perhaps a thousand years from now, their race will begin to lose the fur, or the hides, or both. But the odds are against us finding giant insects, or intelligent reptiles, or anything of the sort. Now, let’s get back to the subject, which, I believe, was the forced development of strict laws during wartime.”
    “Now, if you’ll all turn to page 74, you’ll find the section on Paradise’s polygamy laws, which stand to this day...”
    I struggled in Language, mainly because there are so many rules regarding Standard speech and writing. If the plural form of mouse is mice, then shouldn’t the plural of house be hice? And so on, like the conjugation of verbs. What does it matter if you say dragged, drug, drugged, or even yuilenopadndoe, as long as I understand what you’re saying?
    The Trayak language is much simpler. Our language teacher, Mr. Thtrolla, had lived in Hjerthdon, the capital city of the Trayaks on Tuf, for four years, and made the class fun, by serving Trayak dishes once a week. He said that sometime in their past, the Trayaks had probably had many cultures and languages, much like Old Home Terra, but at some point in their history, they had sat down and fixed their language. He said the human race probably would have done the same thing, but they had been forced to flee their home planet before history and evolution had taken them to the point of needing a common language. Of course, the human race does use a common language, but that’s because all the ships that were used to evacuate our home system used English, most of which carried over into Standard.
    “But”, he said, “this summer, I’m going to a convention on Yurple to meet with a lot of other language experts, and we’re going to examine the possibility of fixing Standard. If anything like that ever happens, though, don’t worry; you can talk the way you do until the day you die. Changing the common language of ten billion people will take several generations. In fact, it’ll take years and years just to decide how we’re going to...”
    My last class every day was an elective, taken mainly for fun: ESP. Mainly we studied the history of telepathy, its possible future uses, etc. But there were also tests to show our ESP rating. Mine was zero. When another student looked at a certain card, and concentrated on the picture, I never once guessed the right card. Mrs. Rutherford said that was strange, since even probability said I should get one in five, just from luck. Norman usually guessed two out of five, but as other cards were introduced, his rating went down. There was one girl in our class who only missed one card out of every ten or twenty hands. Mrs. Rutherford always got excited, and had tears in her eyes whenever this girl was doing her thing. I don’t think that girl could read minds, though, because she wasn’t doing too well in any of her other classes. They say Trayaks have the highest ESP rating of any known race, and sometimes they use telepathy instead of radio for communication. That’s hard to swallow. Destiny was taking self-defense as her fitness elective at Tarkin University; she had switched into that class right after the incident with Billy Donovan. She said it was really exciting, since her instructor had once been an instructor with the Yurple Militia Regulars, and knew a lot of neat stuff. I told her just to keep me around, and she’d be okay. She laughed and told me I should take the class.
    When the New Planet Spacelines opened their terminal, just before Destiny’s 18th birthday, she quit the construction company and got a job with New Planet.
    One Sunday afternoon, while we sat in a restaurant, I asked her about it. “I know you’re just keeping a job so no one will ask where you get your money from, but are you sure you want to work for a spaceline? They could transfer you at any time, to some planet I haven’t even heard of. Besides the fact that space ports are the first targets in any war.”
    “How do you know, Philipp? The human race has never had a war on a planet with spaceports, now have they?”
    “Well... No, but that’s just logical. If I were a general, trying to occupy a planet, I’d hit their spaceports first, to disable their fleet. It’s just the way it would be done.”
    She laughed. “Don’t worry, my dear. If a war starts, I promise you, I’ll quit. Okay? Besides, I think the job will help us. With the money.”
    “The wha—” I saw the look in her eye. Oh. With our money. “How?”
    “Well, for one thing, all employees get discounts on trips, and once a year, every employee gets a free trip, and a paid vacation. When we’re ready to start taking our money off-planet, I can use the discounted trips, and get my pick of berths in the liners. And employees don’t get their baggage checked, even if they’re going to the stiffer worlds, like Tuf or Turner’s Planet.” You could carry just about anything anywhere, but if you went to one of those older worlds, they’d sort through your bags. “Not only that, I’m making more per hour now, so it doesn’t look so bad when I spend it. Are you going to eat the rest of that steak?”
    “What? Oh, sure, sure.” I went back to my food, using my last bites of steak to wipe up the remaining sauce, while I thought about what she’d said. That moment, right then and there, is when I made the unconscious decision to go on robbing banks.”
    She watched me think for a while, then asked, “So when do you think we should do it again, and where?”
    I swallowed the last bite, and washed it down with the last of my Bliss soda. “Whenever we do it, we should plan it out a little longer than we did those other times. You know, find out how many people there are going to be, whether or not there are cameras, the possibility of disabling the cameras, our getaway route, so forth. And let’s wear gloves next time. We wasted like ten minutes when we were wiping all those prints off.”
    “What about Batesville? I hear they have two new banks over there, and the town is still growing so fast they don’t have enough police to watch the whole place. They’ve probably got cameras, since they heard about the robbery over here, but we can either figure out how to turn them off, or maybe wear masks.”
    “Have I told you lately that I love you?”
    “Not since you had your first taste of that steak sauce. I told you it was good. Do you know how to drive?”
    “Destiny, has anyone ever told you it’s really confusing when you switch subjects so suddenly?”
    “No. I thought it was the same subject; good steak sauce and fast cars all go under the main heading Big Money And How To Get It. So I really didn’t change the subject. Can you drive, or do I need to show you how? I think we might need two vehicles for this job, if we want to do it right.”

*

As I crouched in the darkness outside the Townsend house, I told myself again that they’d be getting their car back. I told myself I really wasn’t stealing the car; I was just borrowing it for our getaway, then we’d leave it somewhere in good enough condition so they wouldn’t have lost anything but maybe a day’s use of it.
    The Desters’ old aircar looked much like it had before the family had gotten rich. When they’d sold it to the Townsends, the ancient vehicle had kept on ticking.
    I checked my watch, then moved stealthily out of my cover, and up to the lorry. Sure enough, the old key Destiny had found in the bottom of her purse fit the lock. When I turned the key, I found that the door hadn’t even been locked. People on colonial worlds are of an innately trusting type. Quickly, I opened the door and slipped inside. I pulled my new penlight out of my vest pocket, and turned it on, cupping my hand so the light wouldn’t go everywhere.
    When I found the power switch, I slipped Destiny’s old key into the slot, and turned it. With a loud pop and a few deafening clicks, the old machine came to life. The dashboard lit up, and I hit the drive switch. The lorry rose off the ground, and I sped away, just as the house lights came on. I headed toward town at breakneck speed, until I was out of sight of the Townsend house, then turned down a side road, doubling back toward the outer farms where Destiny would be waiting. I was driving without lights, bending over the steering wheel to see the road better.
    As soon as I reached open country, I pulled off at the designated spot, and parked the lorry between two clumps of Persiphone’s tall bushes. I didn’t see Destiny, so I dialed her phone number.
    “Yeah, what do you want?” I heard her sweet voice say, with just a little paranoia in her tone.
    “I don’t see your car, baby. Where are you?”
    “Right beside you, on the other side of these trees. Come get this power cell; it’s too heavy for me.”
    I stepped out, got the spare power cell out of her car’s storage compartment, and lugged it over to the lorry. I pulled out the lorry’s old cell, which still had a little charge left, and replaced it with the new one. Destiny watched me, looking up the road every now and then.
    I looked up at her. “Do you think this old crate will make it all the way? It seemed pretty shaky on the way out here. I mean, that’s a long drive to Batesville.”
    “We kept it in good condition, back when we owned it. But, if it starts to go down, hit the landing skid button, and brace yourself. Then I’ll come back to get you.”
    “Okay.”
    With the new cell in it, the lorry acted much better, but still popped and clicked annoyingly, especially when I got it up to high speeds. We had decided to go across the ocean, since we didn’t need any insomnia-stricken hermit farmers spotting two speeding cars in the middle of the night and deciding to report them. Besides, it would have taken more than twice as long to stay over land. Even then, we’d end up having to cross some pretty good stretches of water. We made it to our continent’s west coast in about 45 minutes, then lit out across the water, about fifty feet above the cold black sea.
    We had agreed not to call each other while over the water, since our phones would have to track with a satellite in the absence of transmitting towers, and we were trying to do this job without leaving any traces. I did take my gloves off during that long stretch though, since my hands were starting to sweat. I made a mental note to wipe the steering wheel again, after I put my gloves back on.
    Even though night had been well in progress when we left Tarkin, we crossed nine time zones, going westward. So, since we made the trip in less than five hours, we had gained four hours. It was early evening in Batesville. I had fallen asleep once or twice while driving, but luckily I hadn’t touched the control wheel while asleep; it held its bearing, so I arrived at the right place. It was a Friday evening in Batesville and the night life had just started.
    I followed Destiny through the same streets we had driven down the weekend before, and pulled into the parking lot of an unfinished hotel. I parked the lorry out of sight behind a bulldozer, while Destiny parked in front of the main office. I waited about fifteen minutes, until she called me from the room. Our phones were now transmitting through the local towers, so there would be less chance of detection. Most calls were just sent on automatically to the recipient, and the record was deleted when the call was over.
    “Come on in, baby. Room 210. The guy in the office is reading a book.”
    “Yeah, and if he’s smart, he’ll go to sleep, and dream about you. Be right there.”
    As I got out, I wiped the steering wheel clean, and the few switches I had used in parking got the treatment too. My bare hands would never touch the lorry again. Before going inside, I rubbed some mud over the ID decal on the lorry. I had switched off the transponder when I had first stolen the vehicle. It would be days before local police could identify it as the stolen vehicle they were looking for.
    Inside the room, I flopped on the bed. “You would not believe how tired just driving can make you. I don’t know how late I’ll wake up.”
    “What do you mean, I wouldn’t believe it?” she retorted with a grin. “I just drove the same distance. And I know how late you’ll sleep, because I’m going to wake you up.”

*

When I woke up, Destiny was emptying her bag onto the bed beside me. When I got out of the shower, she was ready to go. She wore nice but comfortable pants, a thin, almost see-through blouse, and a woman’s sport coat over it. In each inside pocket of her coat, she had two bags, the collapsible kind that take up almost no room when they’re empty. In the outer pockets were her gloves. In her purse, she had a new roll of packing tape, should we need it, and a pair of wire cutters.
    I wore jeans, a T-shirt, and a multi-pocket vest. In my pants pockets, I had two bags of my own, my own gloves, my penlight, and the gun that Destiny had given me. Billy Donovan had given it to her when they were still dating, and she almost threw it away before she gave in and let me keep it. It had twenty tiny darts in its magazine, each with enough medicine to put a man down for a few minutes.
    And on my back, under my vest, I wore my school project: an a-grav motor. The ones we built in class had been cube-shaped, roughly eight inches on a side. This one was only an inch in thickness, and covered most of my back. As long as I didn’t bend over too far, or try to twist around, it wouldn’t show much. The control module was about the size of my phone, connected by three feet of self-retracting wire, and hooked on the top of the gadget, just below the top of the vest. There, I could reach it by bending my arm back as if to scratch the middle of my back.
    We were ready. We had scoped out the bank the weekend before, telling her mother and Harry that we were going sightseeing. The weekend of the actual heist, Harry himself was in Batesville, meeting with the town leaders, and I had left a message for him at our house, saying I would be out all day with Destiny. Destiny had told her mother she was staying the weekend in the dorms with some of her friends. Our plan was as foolproof as we could make it.
    She parked her car on a side road adjoining one side of a supermarket, about six blocks from the bank. I picked her up in the lorry and we parked it in an alley one street away from the bank. I left it unlocked, but taped the ignition key on the inside of my upper arm, under the cover of my T-shirt sleeve. We walked out onto the main street and crossed it, so we could pass the bank on the opposite side and take one last look before we went inside. Everything looked good.
    “Let’s walk on down, Sandy, and come back on the other side”, I said quietly. We had decided to keep using our same fake names for the present.
    There were a lot of people out on the streets shopping. Some were buying groceries for their apartments in town, some were selling produce from their farms, and some were buying clothes and other goodies. I saw one family loading up a brand new tractor with all sorts of brand new farming attachments. All the faces looked bright and healthy, as they should on a growing and prospering planet.
    We came back down the other side of the street and when we got to the bank, Destiny ducked down the alley next to it. I headed for the front door, lighting a cigarette as I went. I didn’t smoke and didn’t like people who did — I was only using the smoke as an excuse to stand outside the bank until Destiny’s job was done. Standing under the wide awning in front of the bank, I watched the people going in and out, for two reasons. One, so I would know how many customers we’d have to deal with; two, so I could locate any potential heroes. Of course, every man that walked in looked like a colonist, all of who have the potential to play hero, but some were more alert than others. I pulled my left-hand glove out of my pocket, and pulled it on. Nobody was giving me a second glance. Then I looked at my watch: if Destiny was doing her job according to plan, I had fifteen seconds.
    Without hurrying, I took the right-hand glove out of my pocket and put it on. I flicked my cigarette into the street, and turned to walk in the door. Just as I grasped the handle, the lights went out. I heard a gasp, then the emergency power came on, lighting the place dimly.
    I pulled the gun out of my vest pocket, and walked in. The guard by the door got two darts before anyone else knew what was going on; he went down with a thumping sound. One lady let out a whimpering scream, two or three men voiced a little profanity, and the other guard came for me. He had been standing by the counter, but now he was drawing his own weapon and moving forward. Even as I pulled the trigger, I saw that he had a gun just like Schiller had — the old fashioned kind, with shell casings, lead bullets, exploding powder, and the like. As my two darts entered his chest and neck and he went down, he kept moving forward, so when he dropped his gun it came sliding across the slick buffed floor and stopped at my feet.
    The two tellers and the weekend manager were just then starting to react. I grabbed the guard’s gun off the floor, and pointed both guns at them. “Don’t touch those alarms, people, I managed to say in a pretty strong voice.
    Destiny rushed in the door behind me, and took the other guard’s gun out of his holster. I noted with satisfaction that she had her gloves on.
    She spoke. “Get on the floor. NOW!” They got. The customers, that is. The tellers and the manager were standing dangerously close to the counter. I put one dart in each of the tellers, and they each looked sick for a second, then dropped to the floor.
    I waved my guns at the manager. “You don’t get a dart, you hear me? You try anything funny, and I’m using the real gun, okay? So let’s be a good little colonist, and do what you’re told.
    I handed the dart gun to Destiny, and she handed me her two bags. I had been inside the bank for only twenty-five seconds.
    Tucking Destiny’s two bags under one arm, I pulled my own two out of a pocket while I walked to the counter, and behind it, still pointing the gun at the manager. “Now, let’s get that vault open, mister.”
    He looked surprised. “But it’s already open, I—”
    “Shut up!” I growled, and looked around the corner to find that the vault was indeed open. Sandy. “Do him.”
    She complied, putting two darts into him. I headed into the vault. Setting the gun on a shelf, I began loading up the bags, only taking a few 100nd notes. Mostly I grabbed the bundles of 10s and 20s. I just dropped them into the bags as fast as I could, filling them.
    When I was starting on the third bag, Destiny walked in and started helping me. I stared at her. “What are you doing? Who’s covering the lobby, my dad’s ghost?”
    “Get on with it”, she ordered, even though we were both stuffing money in bags as fast as we could. “I darted all the customers, and taped the guards and employees.”
    “What if someone comes in the door?”
    “We’re done, arent we?” she answered, zipping up the last bag. “And I’ve got seven darts left, if anyone’s in the lobby.”
    We stepped out of the vault, to see that one of the female tellers was stirring, so Destiny dropped a bag and shot another dart into the woman. The front door swung open right about then, and two more darts went flying through the air. The man who was entering the bank dropped to the floor, propping the door open with his limp form.
    “Let’s go”, I said. I had the guard’s real gun tucked into my waistband; Destiny handed me the other real gun, which I stuffed into a money bag while she put the dart gun in her own belt. As we headed for the door, I held both of my bags in my left arm, while I reached over my shoulder, and pulled out the control module for my a-grav motor.
    Destiny and I stepped over the crumpled customer in the doorway, and stepped out. I hit the power switch on the control panel in my right hand, and swung my left arm around Destiny’s waist, moneybags and all. Just as I gripped her tightly and pressed the up button, we noticed that a crowd was quickly gathering in front of the bank, possibly due to the limp body in the doorway. As we rose into the air, my left arm muscles bulging from the strain, Destiny ripped open two stacks of 20s, and dropped them. The bills fluttered down. Disappearing over the top of the bank, I saw a fight breaking out below, as a dozen people tried to catch the money at one time. Two minutes and fifty seconds had elapsed; I guess Destiny is the fastest tape handler I know.
    We popped up into the sky above the bank, and I punched two more keys on my control panel. I then wrapped my right arm around my girl, to give the left arm a little relief. We floated forward and down, heading for the alley where we had parked the lorry, dropping slowly due to the setting on the machine. Just before we landed, the power in my a-grav unit cut out. We dropped the last four feet as if we were rocks. I banged into the side of the lorry, still supporting Destiny.
    I let go of her and my bags and ripped the key out from under my arm, getting the tape stuck to my gloves. I hopped in the driver’s seat and turned the key while Destiny tossed the bags in the back. When I heard her yell, “Go!” I went, pulling out onto the street, just as people were walking around the corner, curious as to where we had disappeared. Most of these pedestrians had their eyes pointed to the sky, and barely had time to fall out of the way when I powered the lorry past them.
    Taking every possible turn between the bank and the grocery store, I kept my speed up, but not too high. I didn’t want to end up like my parents, a bloody burning pulp smeared across ghastly wreckage.
    “Get ready, girl!” I hollered back to Destiny when I saw the store approaching. I brought that lorry to a lurching halt next to her car, and then pivoted it, so the back door would be right against her car’s rear hatch. I left the key in the ignition, and hopped out to join her. I still didn’t hear any sirens. There were a couple of people coming out of the grocery store, but they were looking out toward the parking lot and didn’t see us. During the drive, I had put my control module back in place, and buttoned the lower button of my vest, so we probably didn’t look too suspicious, except that we were moving pretty quickly. In the Cyr Luxury Sport, there is only a small storage space behind the two seats, and Destiny’s duffel bag already occupied half of that space. We crammed two moneybags back there, and the other two rode with me in the passenger seat. When we pulled out of the parking lot in her car, I looked at my watch.
    “Girl, that was fast! Look at that, five minutes and ten seconds!”
    She ignored me as she pulled out into traffic, hurriedly making several turns. After that, we just blended in with the traffic, heading due south.

*

Persiphone has six continents, more than most of the planets that humans occupy; Turner’s Planet, for instance, has only one major land mass, covering just more than half of the planet’s surface area, and two large islands that don’t really qualify. Grorange also only has one continent, but it’s not that big. Poois is named for its lack of landmass: Planet Of One Island. Tuf has four continents, and two major islands. Willsworld has three continents.
    Tarkin, our hometown, is on Persiphone’s largest landmass — Alana — and just south of that continent is Basplace, owned in its entirety by the Cyr Corporation. South of Basplace is Ostrollia, presently uninhabited. Just west of these last two, is another empty continent, Lichten. Keep going west and you’ll run into the southern tip of the long, skinny continent, called Vertiga, where Batesville is. From the northern tip of that beanpole continent, go back east, and you’ll find the sixth landmass, known as Troller. Go east again, and you’ve come back to Alana, completing the square. Except that planets are round.
    So, from Batesville, you could keep going west, and circle the globe, and run into the eastern edge of Alana. But we decided to go back pretty much the way we had come, since the police would be looking for the lorry. And would find the lorry. Then they would check its registration, and find the Townsends. They would probably find that it had been reported stolen earlier in the day, and find no fingerprints, or any other identifying marks, except the new power cell, which had been wiped clean of prints. I’m sure the Townsends would appreciate that new addition.
    After we came out of the south end of Batesville, we turned west just long enough to get to the mountains, and then went north. After our mileage indicator said we had traveled north past Batesvilles latitude, we looped back east, keeping the car low to the ground, soon slipping out over the ocean. We kept edging to the north, until we saw the southern tip of Troller, then curved back southward, completing our arc back to Tarkin. That sporty little car had the luxury of a planetary map in its computer, so we didn’t get too far off track. We left Batesville at 9:30 or so in the morning, and made it back to Tarkin in about five hours. When you tack on the nine hours for the time zone change, it was after midnight in Tarkin, but we had only been awake for six or seven hours. So we got another hotel in Tarkin, and celebrated for the rest of the night.

*

The take came to more than three million newdollars. Added to our previous earnings and split fifty-fifty between us, my half came to more than 2.5 million. And I was only fifteen years old.
    This time, we buried the money, along with some of the previous take that I could sneak out of my mansion. We did it the next weekend, after school ended for the summer. We drove into the Cloudy Mountains in the northeastern region of Alana, memorized the exact location off the satellite tracker in Destiny’s car, and buried almost four million newdollars in six waterproof bags.
    We each had more than a half million still hidden in my room in Harry’s mansion, and we tried to be careful as to how we spent it. We did desposit a stack of bills — equal to the price of a decent used aircar — on the Townsends’ porch.
    The money in the ground wasn’t there very long.

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