“Any sign of violence?”
“No, but they’re acting funny.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know,” said Nerishev. “I just don’t like it.”
“Stay out of the shed, huh? You can’t speak the language, anyhow, and I want you in one piece when I come back.” He hesitated. “If I come back.”
“You’ll be fine,” Nerishev said.
“Sure I will. I—oh, Lord!”
“What’s it? What’s wrong?”
“Boulder coming down! Talk to you later!”
Clayton turned his attention to the boulder, a rapidly growing black speck to windward. It was heading directly toward his anchored and immobilized truck. He glanced at the windspeed indicator. Impossible—174 miles an hour! And yet, he reminded himself, winds in the stratospheric jet stream on Earth blow at 200 miles an hour.
The boulder, large as a house, still growing as it approached, was rolling directly his way.
“Swerve! Turn!” Clayton bellowed at the boulder, pounding the instrument panel with his fist.
The boulder was coming at him, straight as a ruler line, rolling right down the wind.
With a yell of agony, Clayton touched a button, releasing both anchors at the cable end. There was no time to winch them in, even assuming the winch could take the strain. Still the boulder grew.
Clayton released the brakes.
The Brute, shoved by a wind of 178 miles an hour, began to pick up speed. Within seconds, he was traveling at 38 miles an hour, staring through his rearview mirror at the boulder overtaking him.
As the boulder rolled up, Clayton twisted the steering wheel hard to the left. The truck tilted over precariously, swerved, fishtailed on the hard ground, and tried to turn itself over. He fought the wheel, trying to bring the Brute back to equilibrium. He thought: I’m probably the first man who ever jibed a twelve-ton truck!
The boulder, looking like a whole city block, roared past. The heavy truck teetered for a moment, then came to rest on its six wheels.
“Clayton! What happened? Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Clayton gasped. “But I had to slip the cables. I’m running downwind.”
“Can you turn?”
“Almost knocked her over, trying to.”
“How far can you run?”
Clayton stared ahead. In the distance, he could make out the dramatic black cliffs that rimmed the plain.
“I got about fifteen miles to go before I pile into the cliffs. Not much time, at the speed I’m traveling.” He locked his brakes. The tires began to scream and the brake linings smoked furiously. But the wind, at 183 miles an hour, didn’t even notice the difference. His speed over the ground had picked up to 44 miles an hour.
“Try sailing her out!” Nerishev said.
“She won’t take it.”
“Try, man! What else can you do? The wind’s hit 185 here. The whole station’s shaking! Boulders are tearing up the whole post defense. I’m afraid some boulders are going to get through and flatten—”
“Stow it,” Clayton said. “I got troubles of my own.”
“I don’t know if the station will stand! Clayton, listen to me. Try the—”
The radio suddenly and dismayingly went dead.
Clayton banged it a few times, then gave up. His speed over the ground reached 49 miles an hour. The cliffs were already looming large before him.
“So all right,” Clayton said. “Here we go.” He released his last anchor, a small emergency job. At its full length of 250 feet of steel cable, it slowed him to 30 miles an hour. The anchor was breaking and ripping through the ground like a jet-propelled plow.
Clayton then turned on the sail mechanism. This had been installed by the Earth engineers upon much the same theory that has small oceangoing motor boats carry a small mast and auxiliary sail. The sails are insurance, in case the engine fails. On Carella, a man could never walk home from a stranded vehicle. He had to come in under power.
The mast, a short, powerful steel pillar, extruded itself through a gasketed hole in the roof. Magnetic shrouds and stays snapped into place, supporting it. From the mast fluttered a sail made of link-woven metal. For a mainsheet, Clayton had a three-part flexible-steel cable, working through a winch.
The sail was only a few square feet in area. It could drive a twelve-ton monster with its brakes locked and an anchor out on 250 feet of line—
Easily—with the wind blowing 185 miles an hour.
Clayton winched in the mainsheet and turned, taking the wind on the quarter. But a quartering course wasn’t good enough. He winched the sail in still more and turned further into the wind.
With the super-hurricane on his beam, the ponderous truck heeled over, lifting one entire side into the air. Quickly Clayton released a few feet of mainsheet. The metal-link sail screamed and chattered as the wind whipped it.
Driving now with just the sail’s leading edge, Clayton was able to keep the truck on its feet and make good a course to windward.
Through the rear-vision mirror, he could see the black, jagged cliffs behind him. They were his lee shore, his coast of wrecks. But he was sailing out of the trap. Foot by foot, he was pulling away.
“That’s my baby!” Clayton shouted to the battling Brute.
His sense of victory snapped almost at once, for he heard an earsplitting clang and something whizzed past his head. At 187 miles an hour, pebbles were piercing his armor plating. He was undergoing the Carellan equivalent of a machine-gun barrage. The wind shrieked through the holes, trying to batter him out of his seat
Desperately he clung to the steering wheel. He could hear the sail wrenching. It was made out of the toughest flexible alloys available, but it wasn’t going to hold up for long. The short, thick mast, supported by six heavy cables, was whipping like a fishing rod.
His brake linings were worn out, and his speed over the ground came up to 57 miles an hour.
He was too tired to think. He steered, his hands locked to the wheel, his slitted eyes glaring ahead into the storm.
The sail ripped with a scream. The tatters flogged for a moment, then brought the mast down. Wind gusts were approaching 190 miles an hour.
The wind now was driving him back toward the cliffs. At 192 miles an hour of wind, the Brute was lifted bodily, thrown for a dozen yards, slammed back on its wheels. A front tire blew under the pressure, then two rear ones. Clayton put his head on his arms and waited for the end.
Suddenly, the Brute stopped short. Clayton was flung forward. His safety belt checked him for a moment, then snapped. He banged against the instrument panel and fell back, dazed and bleeding.
He lay on the floor, half-conscious, trying to figure out what had happened. Slowly he pulled himself back into the seat, foggily aware that he hadn’t broken any limbs. His stomach was one great bruise. His mouth was bleeding.
At last, looking through the rear-vision mirror, he saw what had happened. The emergency anchor, trailing at 250 feet of steel cable, had caught in a deep outcropping of rock. A fouled anchor had brought him up short, less than half a mile from the cliffs. He was saved—
For the moment, at least.
But the wind hadn’t given up yet. The 193-mile-an-hour wind bellowed, lifted the truck bodily, slammed it down, lifted it again, slammed it down. The steel cable hummed like a guitar string. Clayton wrapped his arms and legs around the seat. He couldn’t hold on much longer. And if he let go, the madly leaping Brute would smear him over the walls like toothpaste—
If the cable didn’t part first and send him hurtling into the cliffs.
He held on. At the top of one swing, he caught a glimpse of the windspeed indicator. The sight of it sickened him. He was through, finished, done for. How could he be expected to hold on through the force of a 187-mile-an-hour wind? It was too much.
It was—187 miles an hour? That meant that the wind was dropping!
He could hardly believe it at first. But slowly, steadily, the dial hand crept down. At 160 miles an hour, the truck stopped slamming and lay passively at the end of its anchor line. At 153, the wind veered—a sure sign that the blow was nearly over.