And then, suddenly, he remembered, and a terrible coldness choked him and his flesh flinched as he saw a door into nightmare opening.
That tower, and the announcement of a new H-bomb test, and the distance he was from Vegas, and the way those frantic jets had drawn back....
"Oh, no," said Price. "Oh, no, oh no, oh no—"
He was still saying it when the bomb went off and the universe cracked wide open under his racing plane.
CHAPTER II
The cataclysm that hit Price was without light or sound. That, when he thought of it later, was the most awful feature of it.
He felt a shock, but not the shock of ultimate annihilation he expected. This was a shuddering impact as of the plane, himself, hitting some barrier and forcing through, a rending, tearing, dizzying thing that was like no sensation he had ever experienced.
He yelled, naked terror forcing the air from his lungs. His weight flung against the straps, and he knew from that that the plane was in a spin. Mechanically, his hands reached to the controls. He levelled off....
But he wasn't dead. He was alive, undestroyed, and how could that be if the raving energies of a hydrogen bomb had been unloosed beneath him?