tously.

"Oh. Sure," Michaels said. "Kind of a _voice_, wasn't it, Sam? Didn't
understand what it said. Wasn't listening too close, not like you."

_Thud-thud-thump-thud._

"No voice," Collins whispered. "That infernal sound, don't you hear it,
Ed?"

"I must hurry along," the undertaker said. "Must get ready to work on
Nancy, get her ready for her parents to see."

"All right, Doc. I'll take care of Sam."

"Where you going to jail me, Ed?" Collins asked, his eyes on the closed
truck doors. "In your storeroom like you did Hank Petrie?"

Michaels' face suddenly began to work. "Jail? Jail you? Jail's too good
for you. Doc, have you got a tow rope in that truck?"

Ed Michaels was the best shot in town, probably one of the best marksmen
in the world. He had been in the Olympics about thirty years ago. He was
Waraxe's one claim to fame. But he wasn't a cowboy. He wasn't a fast
draw.

Collins put all of his weight behind his left fist and landed it on the
point of Michaels' jaw, just the way he used to do when gangs of boys
jumped onto him.

[Illustration]

Michaels sprawled out, spread-eagled.

Then Collins wanted to take the revolver out of Ed's belt, and press it
into Ed's hand, curling his fingers around the grip and over the
trigger, and then he wanted to shake Ed awake, slap his face and shake
him....

Collins spun around, clawed open the door to the truck cab and threw
himself behind the steering wheel.

He stopped wanting to make Ed Michaels shoot him.

He flipped the ignition switch, levered the floor shift and drove away.

And he was going to drive on and on and on and on.

And on and on and on.

IV

Collins turned onto the old McHenty blacktop, his foot pressed to the
floorboards. Ed Michaels didn't own a car; he would have to borrow one
from somebody. That would take time. Maybe Candle would give him his
hearse to use to follow the Black Rachel.

Trees, fences, barns whizzed past the windows of the cab and then the
steel link-mesh fence took up, the fence surrounding the New Kansas
National Spaceport. Behind it, further from town, some of the concrete
had been poured and the horizon was a remote, sterile gray sweep.

The McHenty Road would soon be closed to civilian traffic. But right now
the government wanted people to drive along and see that the spaceship
was nothing terrible, nothing to fear.

The girl, Nancy Comstock, was alive in the back. He knew that. But he
couldn't st