He pulled up too late.

I smashed into the ship's flank at a low angle. Without the crash field I'd have been hamburger. As it was, I blacked out instantly.

I woke in the midst of a flaming maelstrom, gripped in a vise that wouldn't let me breathe, with agony tearing at my hands. The car was diving out of the sky at four times sonic speed, with its aerodynamic stability smashed to hell. I could feel the terrific deceleration in my inner ear.

I tried to use the controls. Not that they would have worked; the ship was obviously stone dead. But I tried it anyway, and then the pain came. My hands had been outside the crash field, naturally; how else could I control the car? Half the joints had been dislocated in the crash.

The ground came up, rotating. I tried to pull my hands back, but deceleration pulled me hard against the crash web, and the crash field held. I was embedded in glass.

I hit.

The car was on its nose in high fern grass. All the plastic windows had become flying shards, including the windshield; they littered the car. The windshield frame was crushed and bent. I hung from the crash web, unable to unfasten it with my crippled hands, unable to move even if I were free.

And I watched the Drunkard's Walk, its fusion drive off, floating down ahead of me on its gravity drag.

I didn't notice the anomaly then. I was dazed, and I saw what I expected to see: a spaceship landing. Bellamy? He didn't see it, either, but he would have if he'd looked to the side when he came down the landing ladder.

He came down the ladder with his eyes fixed on mine and Emil's sonic in his hand. He stepped out into the fern grass, walked over to the car, and peered in through the bent windshield frame.

«Come on out.»

«I can't use my hands.»

«So much the better.» Bellamy rested the sonic on the rim of the frame and pointed it at my face. With his other hand he reached in to unfasten the crash web and pull me out by the arm. «Walk,» he said. «Or be dragged.»

I could walk, barely. I could keep walking because he kept prodding the small of my back with the gun.

«You've helped me, you know. You had a car crash,» he said. «You and Jilson. Then some predators found you.»

It sounded reasonable. I kept walking.

We were halfway to the ship when I saw it. The anomaly. I said, «Bellamy, what's holding your ship up?»

He prodded me. «Walk.»

«Your gyros. That's what's holding the ship up.»

He prodded me without answering. I walked. Any moment now he'd see …

«What the —» He'd seen it. He stared in pure amazement, and then he ran. I stuck out a foot to trip him, lost my balance, and fell on my face. Bellamy passed me without a glance.

One of the landing legs wasn't down. I'd smashed it into the hull. He hadn't seen it on the indicators, so I must have smashed the sensors, too. The odd thing was that we'd both missed it, though it was the leg facing us.

The Drunkard's Walk stood on two legs, wildly unbalanced, like a ballet dancer halfway through a leap. Only her gyros held her monstrous mass against gravity. Somewhere in her belly they must be spinning faster and faster … I could hear the whine now, high-pitched, rising …

Bellamy reached the ladder and started up. He'd have to use the steering jets now, and quickly. With steering jets that size, the gyros — which served more or less the same purpose — must be small, little more than an afterthought.

Now was my chance!

I struggled to my feet and staggered a few steps. Bellamy looked down, then ignored me. He'd take care of me when he had time. Where could I go? Where could I hide on this flat plain?

Some chance. I stopped walking.

Bellamy had almost reached the air lock when the ship screamed like a wounded god.

The gyros had taken too much punishment. That metal scream must have been the death agony of the mountings. Bellamy stopped. He looked down, and the ground was too far. He looked up, and there was no time. Then he turned and looked at me.

I read his mind then, though I'm no telepath.

Bey! What'll I DO?

I had no answer for him. The ship screamed, and I hit the dirt. Well, I didn't hit it; I allowed myself to collapse. I was on the way down when Bellamy looked at me, and in the next instant the Drunkard's Walk spun end for end, shrieking.

The nose gouged a narrow furrow in the soil, but the landing legs came down hard, dug deep, and held. Bellamy sailed high over my head, and I lost him in the sky. The ship poised, braced against her landing legs, taking spin from her dying flywheels. Then she jumped.

The landing legs acted like springs, hurling her somersaulting into the air. She landed and jumped again, screaming, tumbling, like a wounded jackrabbit trying to flee the hunter. I wanted to cry. I'd done it; I was guilty; no ship should be killed like this.

Somewhere in her belly the gyroscope flywheels were coming to rest in a tangle of torn metal.

The ship landed and rolled. Bouncing. Rolling. I watched as she receded, and finally the Drunkard's Walk came to rest, dead, far across the blue-green veldt.

I stood up and started walking.

I passed Bellamy on the way. If you'd like to imagine what he looked like, go right ahead.

It was nearly dark when I reached the ship.

What I saw was a ship on its side, with one landing leg up. It's hard to damage hullmetal, especially at the low subsonic speeds the Drunkard's Walk was making when she did all that jumping. I found the air lock and climbed in.

The lifesystem was a scrambled mess. Parts of it, the most rugged parts, were almost intact, but thin partitions between sections showed ragged, gaping holes. The flywheel must have passed here.

The autodoc was near the back. It looked intact, and I needed it badly to take the pain from my hands and put them back together. I'd as soon have stepped into a Bandersnatch's mouth. You can get the willies thinking about all the things that can go wrong with a 'doc.

The bouncing flywheel hadn't reached the control cone.

Things lighted up when I turned on the communications board. I had to manipulate switches with the heel of my hand. I turned on everything that looked like it had something to do with communications, rolled all the volume knobs to maximum between my palms, and let it go at that, making no attempt to aim a com laser, talk into anything, or tap out code. If anything was working on that board — and something was delivering power, even if the machinery to use it was damaged — then the base would get just the impression I wanted them to have. Someone was trying to communicate with broken equipment.

So I settled myself in the control cone and smoked. Using my toes was less painful than trying to hold a cigarette in my fingers. I remembered how shocked Sharrol had been the first time she saw me with a cigarette between my toes. Flatlanders are less than limber.

Eventually someone came.

I picked up the open bulb of glass that Margo had called a snifter and held it before me, watching the play of light in the red-brown fluid. It was a pleasure to use my hands.

Twelve hours ago they had been useless, swollen, and blackening — like things long dead.

«To the hero's return,» said Margo. Her green eyes sparkled. She raised the snifter in a toast and drank.

«I've been in a 'doc the past twelve hours,» I said. «Fill me in. Are we going to get Lloobee back?»

«Lloobee and your friend, too.» Satisfaction was rich in her voice; she was almost purring. «The kidnappers settled for a contract of amnesty and antipublicity, with a penalty of ten thousand stars to the man who causes their names to be published anywhere in known space. Penalty to apply to every man, woman, and child on Gummidgy — you and me included. They insisted we list the names. Did you know there are half a million people on Gummidgy?»