"Faster," Markel said. The convertible shot up and around the next bend, swerved close to the guard-rail, angled across the road, then straightened out. A moment later Rocky came leaning around the curve at a 30° angle; he swerved, leveled out, and came after them like a bullet. "Now! Slow down!" Markel shouted into the wind. He braced his left arm across the back of the seat and aimed the M-1.

Like a runaway jet Rocky came, a poor target crouched behind the plexiglas windshield. Markel fired and missed. For a split second the convertible swerved again and Markel held his breath. Rocky slowed, but he didn't slow enough. Markel's next shot hit the motorcycle's front tire. It blew like a popped balloon. The motorcycle wobbled, spun, tilted on its front wheel, and smashed into the guard-rail. Like a diver, Rocky jackknifed out of the seat, the motorcycle somersaulting beneath him. Then both of them fell slowly down the cliff side.

The Earth Mother stopped the convertible without being told. "Back it up," Markel said. At the place where Rocky went over the cliff she braked it; they got out and went to the edge of the cliff.

The cliff dropped past sumac trees to a boulder-filled creek about a hundred feet below. Partly in the creek lay the smashed motorcycle and several feet away was Rocky, against a boulder. He was oddly twisted and very still.

"He looks dead," said Markel, "but this time I'm going to make sure."

He drove back down the hill to a point where the cliff met the road. Leaving the Earth Mother in the convertible he walked along the creek and found Rocky had broken both legs, his left arm, and his clavicle. Also, Rocky was not breathing and had no pulse. Satisfied, Markel went back to the convertible and the Earth Mother.

CHAPTER II

That, then, ended the episode, in Markel's mind. And now that Rocky was really dead they could drive south leisurely. Markel planned to winter on the Gulf Coast, perhaps to build the new home of Phoenix there. So they went south through days yellow and warm in the September sun. Except for the emptiness, it was like being on a vacation tour.

There had not been emptiness like this in the land for three centuries. Nobody walked the farmlands where tractors rusted in the fields, no planes split the sky where birds soared, no car but theirs moved on the highway. They drove through towns that were like bleached bones in the sun. They passed peeling 

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