Had he seen me?

The ship curved around toward the sun, slowed, and stopped in my path. It came down my throat. I swerved; Bellamy swerved to meet me.

He flashed by overhead, and my car, moving at Mach four, bucked under the lash of the sonic boom. The crash field gripped me for an instant, then went off.

He turned and came from behind.

Slam! And he was disappearing into the blue and green and orange sunset. What was he playing at? He must know that one touch of fusion flame would finish me.

He could end me any time he pleased. The Drunkard’s Walk was moving at twice my speed, and Bellamy moved it about like an extension of his fingers. He was playing with me.

Again he turned, and again the hypersonic boom slapped me down. The blur of veldt came up at me, then receded. Another such might slap me into the fern grass at Mach four.

He wasn’t playing. He was trying to force me to land. My corpse was to carry no evidence of murder.

Slam! And again the black blotch shrank against the sunset.

It was no playboy’s yacht he was flying. Such an expensive toy would have been long and slender, with a superfluous needle nose and low maneuverability due to its heavy angular movement. The Drunkard’s Walk was short, with big attitude jets showing like nostrils in the stubby nose. I should have known when I saw the landing legs. Big and wide and heavy, folded now into the hull, but when they were down, they were comically splayfooted, with a wide reach to hold the ship on almost any terrain.

The playboy’s flashy paint job was indirection only. The ship…

The ship made a wide loop ahead of me and came slashing back.

I pulled back hard on the wheel.

The blood left my head, and then the crash field took hold. I was in a cushioned shell, and the crash field held my shape like an exoskeleton. As I curved up to meet him Bellamy came down my throat.

Give him a taste of his own medicine!

If I hadn’t been half-loaded, I’d never have done it.

A crash now was the last thing Bellamy wanted. It would leave evidence not only on the car but on the Drunkard’s Walk. But space pilots crack up more cars. They can’t get used to the idea that in the atmosphere of a planet Mach four is fast. He must have been doing Mach eight himself.

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.