There were a lot of other things, which, if not misled by the benign appearance of the morning and my own excitement and inexperience of this world, I might also have brought: a gyro-compass, a locator, a beacon, even an ordinary mobile telephone, not to mention real weapons. I had plenty of navigation instruments and communications equipment, as I had a good autodoc and almost everything else I might need, but they were all in the car. I had an implant by which I could be traced if necessary, but there was no reason for anyone to think I was in great distress. If anyone was interested and they assumed I had enough sense to remain with the car and its equipment, then even a storm like this should have been no problem: a matter of touching a button and closing the canopy.

It took me a long time to make progress, and it horrified me how quickly what little daylight there was failed.

And the river was still rising. Chunks of mud were sliding and dropping into it from the sides of my ridge. And the ridge itself was shrinking. Soon it would be an island, and soon after that it would be covered completely. I would have to climb again. It was then that I fully realized how much my life was in real danger.

I was alone, lost, injured. And this was not my world. I knew something of its weather and its wild-life in theory, but I knew that in some ways, simply not having grown up here made me blind and vulnerable to dangers that others instinctively avoided, blind as a village yokel of the fifteenth century on Earth suddenly time-transported into a modern city or a modern transport complex.