against his side, the steel bruising his ribs. His laughter was cut short, as though a gag had been slammed across his mouth. "Can't help ..." he began.

But Fairchild's face was close to his own. "I'll make you laugh, Caine," the man whispered furiously. "I'll make you laugh over what happened. You think about that, eh? You think about that, you bloody...."

Vaguely, Caine knew the pistol had been pulled away from his ribs and was whipping toward his arm. He tried to shift out of its way, but he caught it squarely. The pain paralyzed him and even the sound of his cry was caught by his teeth snapping together. The ship wavered and slid downward.

"You stupid fool!" the woman screamed at her husband.

Caine felt himself sliding out of his seat, the pain throbbing. He caught himself and reached for the controls with his good hand. But he only half-balanced the ship before he saw the tip of a vine-tree. He cut the jets. The trees were all around them, enveloping them. He listened to the snap of the wings, heard distantly the splinter of glass, then nothing.

He was looking at the shape of his arm, when he found his vision again. It was bent peculiarly.

Whose crazy damned arm is that? he thought.

Somehow his brain wanted him to laugh, to slap the comic twisted arm, lying in front of his eyes. The laughter was in his mouth and through his teeth and he raised his good hand.

"Oh, Lord," he said, suddenly sober and feeling the blinding pain. He caught his good hand around a broken metal shaft, and the pain drew tears to his eyes.

I think I'll just go to sleep and die right now, he thought, wondering vaguely where his will and his strength had gone. Did they bleed out? he thought. Did they fall out when the man struck him? Did the woman draw them out last night, like a vampire draws out blood?

Good night, he thought, dimly, dropping his hand from the shaft. Good-by. He closed his eyes.

He was screaming, he knew, and somewhere he heard a man's voice say, "The gauze. The gauze." It was a grating sound, like a metal wheel turning over gravel. He opened his eyes, and Fairchild was wrapping the gauze around his broken arm, splinted from a part of the cabin panelling.

Fairchild looked at him. There was a 

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