It could not go fast. The front fork seemed out of line, and the right handlebar was twisted. But even at slow speed it took him a kilometer or two beyond the post.
The road here ran along the edge of a wooded gorge. Taking his one last chance, Dugan turned the machine over the lip of the cliff and ran it down a steep incline which seemed to smooth out at the bottom.
He expected to crash but he did not. He slewed into heavy bushes and ended up with a jar. The machine had jammed itself and him into a very heavy fir tree. Dugan looked around to see if he could be seen from the road. He simply could not tell. He screwed up his eyelids, trying to tighten them so that he could see better. That effort was his last. He fainted and fell from the machine.
When he awakened, an undetermined time later, the day had become bright. He woke with fire burning against his naked flesh, tearing his side with its sharp flames. Full consciousness brought him the surprise that the fire was internal — the burning of his nerves. At the threshold of consciousness he had believed it real.
He got on hands and knees and unscrewed the canteen he had brought from Atomsk. Water helped wake him.
He rose to his feet.
The road was farther away and higher up than he dared hope. He wondered that he had gotten through the descent down the clifflike slope. What had looked like an incline from above looked like a perpendicular from below.
He touched his face. It felt swollen. Blood, probably his own, was on it. If Sarah could see him now … what would she give for his chances?
There was nothing to do but to fight. First, he had to think of hiding the machine. And then, sleep. And sleep again. Like an animal. That was the first price of staying alive.