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.