O-Zone [antikvár]

The first thing these people always asked, when-ever they went out, was where were "they"?But there was no one here in O-Zoneno aliens, and no Owners except themselves.It had taken the travelers just under two hours to fly the fifteen hundred clicks from Coldharbor Tower in New York City to the large sealed-off territory in the midwest designated Outer Zone. They had decided to fly in a highballing style and to keep together; it was their party moodNew Year's. The four jet-rotors were bunched in the flight envelope like a swarm of insects. The eight travelers looked insec-tile themselves in the last low-altitude phase, with their masks on. These days it was seldom safe to travel in such a dense formation, making an easy buzzing target. Even aliens who had little else had weaponsStarkies had rockets, one of the travelers said. Yet they knew there was no one down below now, and no one else alive for the next three hundred clicks."No Starkies, no Skells, no Trolls," Hooper Allbright said over his radio to the rest of them. "No Shitters, no Diggers, no Roaches. Not even any Federals!"He was photographing it all through the sting in his nose cone."And I don't see any Owners either."The precise pattern of old highways, like wheel tracks, passed beneath.Traveling high in rotors gave them a point of view. They watched the earth through ground-screens in the cockpit.7