Another nasty thought: some of the wrecked war-craft which I had flown over on my way here had had nuclear engines. Could spilled radioactives have worked their way into this mud over the last seven years? Of course the car had instruments that could have told me at once.

Then the real floods came. Out of the west, and concentrating my mind. The rain must have been falling there and filling these water-courses long before the storm reached me. A real roaring and shaking of the ground and white-foam-fronted black water below me advancing like a wall. Hydraulic damming—I remembered the phrase from somewhere as I scrabbled upwards for my life in the slipping mud. I slipped and rolled again, ending up caught in a clump of sharp black rocks just above the rising water. I had damaged my leg some months before in the caves, but it had been healed. Now I felt it was gone again, in a different place, near the ankle. Maybe (I prayed) not broken this time. One small mercy: crawling, almost swimming vertically, up the mud-slope in the hail, an ankle was perhaps less crucial than when walking or running. Another mercy was the low gravity. But progressing up was very different from my carefree jumping downwards. Anyway, I got to a ridge. I tried to stand then, and found I couldn't. The .22 made a sort of crutch, not very handy for it was the wrong length and either barrel or stock sank into the mud when I leaned on it. I more-or-less hopped a few yards.

I had to get back to the car. And then I realized I had not the faintest idea in which direction the car was.

I sat down in the mud and hail then, cursing feebly that I hadn't had the sense even to slip a modern cover-all into one of my pockets. It would have weighed next to nothing, taken up no space and would, if I had needed it, kept me as dry and warm as toast. It would even have been strong enough to protect me in a fight. I had put on locally made clothes for the sake of fresh air and ventilation on a warm morning, as well as because it was one of the things tourists do.