He would live exactly
as long as it took a man, reasonably healthy, to starve to death.

Unless he had a hostage and a plan....

* * * * *

She became aware of rain when they left the cliff overhang. There was
almost no wind and the rain came down slowly at first, huge slow drops
which splattered on the black rock.

"If it gets any harder," Slade said, "we'll have to duck under the
cliff for protection. You don't know what a rain can be like back
here. I seen them through the dome."

But they couldn't go under the cliff for protection, not if they
wanted to keep going. For the cliff dropped suddenly in a wild jumble
of rocks and then there was nothing but the sloping black beach,
sloping down to the sea.

Then, all at once, someone opened the sluicegates and the rain
bombarded them. It slapped and bounced off the rock like pistol shots.
It struck them like hammers. They staggered under its weight.

"We'll have to go back to the cliffs!" Marcia cried. She yelled it
again at the top of her voice because she realized Slade would not
hear her otherwise as the rain cracked and exploded and splattered and
crashed. There were no droplets of water. For each one had size and
shape and weight, swift-falling, hammering weight as it came down.
Each one, Marcia thought wildly, struggling to keep her feet, was the
size of your clenched fist there in the gray dawn of Earth.

"The cliffs!" she cried again.

But Adam Slade shook his head, grabbed her arm above the wrist and
pulled her after him. He pointed ahead, in the direction they had been
going. He said nothing. There was no need to talk. They were going
forward and if it killed them probably Adam Slade did not care much.

He wanted that prison time machine for his escape and he was either
going to get it or die in the attempt.

They went on slowly. First one would fall and then the other and when
it was Slade who had fallen, she would wait patiently, hopefully. If
he ever released his hold on the M-gun--

But if it were Marcia who fell, Slade would yank her to her feet
savagely, yelling words which she had heard at first but which after a
while, after an eternity of the storm, seemed to merge with the sound
of the rain and the far booming of thunder out over the water and
then, as if by magic, she was walking again and stumbling along with
Slade, drenched and beaten and half-drowned.

She hardly remembered when night came, but present