World Of Ptavvs   ::   Нивен Ларри

He got to his feet all right, but-when he tried to hop he almost fell on his face. He managed to walk over, looking like a terrified novice trying to move in low gravity. The nearest slave had reached the cage. Kzanol bent his funny knees until he could pick up the disintegrator, using both hands because his new fingers looked so fragile and delicate and helpless. With a growl that somehow got stuck in his throat, he turned the digging instrument on the aliens. When they were all cowering on the floor or against the walls he whirled and ran, smashed into the wire, backed off and disintegrated a hole for himself and ran for the door. He had to let Greenberg through to open the door for him.

For a long time he thought only of running.

There were green lights below, spaced sparsely over the land between the cities. You had to fly high to see two at a time. Between cities most cars did fly that high, especially if the driver ivas the cautious type. The lights were service stations. Usually a car didn't need servicing more than twice a year, but it was nice to be able to see help when you were in open country. The loneliness could get fierce for a city man, and most men were city men.

It was also nice to know you could land near a green light without finding yourself on top of a tree or halfway over a cliff.

Kzanol steered very wide of the cities, and avoided the green lights too. He couldn't have faced a slave in his present state. When he left the physics level he had gone straight to the roof parking levels, to the haven of his Volkswagen, and taken it straight up. Then he had faced the problem of destination. He didn't really want to go anywhere. When he reached altitude he set the car for New York, knowing that he could change back to California before he got there. Henceforth he let the car drive itself, except when he had to steer around a city.

He did a lot of steering. The green country was more nearly islands in a sea of city than vice versa. Time and again he found narrow isthmuses of city, lines of buildings half a mile across following old superhighways. He crossed these at top speed and went on.

At one hour he had to bring the car down. The drive had been grueling. Only his mad urge to flee had kept him going; and he was beginning to know that he had nowhere to flee to. He felt aches and pains that were sheer torture to him, although Greenberg would have ignored them from habit. His fingers were cramped and sore; they seemed more delicate than ever. He was not mistaken in this. The Greenberg memory told him why the little finger of his left hand ached constantly: a baseball accident that had healed wrong.