Jake was pointing the column on a compass-bearing slightly southerly of that which he would have chosen without Gregorius's advice. They aimed to pass below the sprawling salt pans which Gregorius warned were treacherous going.
For the first two hours, the fluffy yellow earth offered no serious obstacle to their passage, except that the narrow solid tyres cut in deeply and created a wearying drag that kept the speed down below ten miles an hour and the old engines grinding in the lower gears.
Then the earth firmed, but was strewn with black stone that had been rounded and polished by the grit-laden wind and varied in size from acorns to ostrich eggs. Their speed dropped away a little more as the cars bounced and jolted over this murderous surface, and the black rock threw the heat back at them, so they rode with all hatches and engine-louvres wide open. Though all of them, including Vicky, had stripped to their underwear, still they ran with sweat that dried almost immediately it oozed from their pores. The exposed metal of the cars, although it was painted white, would blister the hand that touched it, and the engine heat and stench of hot oil and fuel in the driver's compartments was swiftly becoming unbearable as the sun climbed to its zenith.
An hour before noon, Priscilla the Pig blew the safety valve on her radiator and sent a shrieking plume of steam high into the air.
Jake earthed the magneto and stopped her immediately. He climbed, half-naked and shiny with sweat, from the turret and shaded his eyes to peer out across the wavering heat-distorted plain. There was no horizon in this haze and visibility was uncertain after a few hundred yards.
Even the other vehicles lumbering far behind him seemed monstrous and unreal.
He waited for the others to come up before calling, "Switch off.
We can't go on in this. the engine oil will be thin as water, and we'll ruin all the bearings if we try.
We'll wait for it to cool a little." Thankfully, they climbed from the cars and crawled into the shade of the chassis where they lay panting like dogs. Jake went down the line with a five-gallon tin of blood-warm. water and gave them each as much as they could drink before collapsing on the blanket beside Vicky.
"It's too hot to walk back to my own car," he explained, and she took it with good grace, merely nodding and closing one more button of her half-open blouse.
Jake wet his handkerchief from the water can and offered it to her.
Gratefully, she wiped her neck and face and sighed with pleasure.
"It's too hot to sleep," she murmured. "Entertain me, Jake."
"Well now!" he grinned, and she laughed.
"I said it's too hot. Let's talk."
"About "About you. Tell me about you what part of Texas are you from?"
"All of it. Wherever my pa could find work."
"What did he do?
"Wrangled cattle, and rode rodeo."
"Sounds fun." Jake shrugged.
"I preferred machines to horses."
"Then?"
"There was this war, and they needed mechanics to drive tanks."
"Afterwards? Why didn't you go home?"
"Pa was dead a steer fell on him, and it wasn't worth the journey to go collect his old saddle and blanket." They were silent for a while, just lying and riding the solid waves of heat that came off the earth.
"Tell me about your dream, Jake," she said at last.
"My dream?"
"Everybody has a dream." He smiled ruefully.. "I've got a dream-" he hesitated, "there is this idea of mine. It's an engine, the Barton engine.
It's all there." He tapped his forehead. "All I need is the money to build it. For ten years, I've tried to get it together.
Nearly had it a couple of times."
"After this trip, you will have it," she suggested.
"Perhaps." He shook his head. "I've been too sure too many times to make any bets, though."
"Tell me about the engine," she said and he talked quietly but eagerly for ten minutes.
It was a new design, a lightweight, economical design. "It would drive anything, water pump, saw mill, motorcycle, that sort of thing."
He was intent, happy, she saw. "I'd only need a small workshop to begin with, some place back west I've thought about Fort Worth-" he stopped himself, and glanced at her. "Sorry, I was running on a bit."
"No," she said quickly. "I enjoyed listening. I hope it works out for you, Jake." He nodded. "Thanks. And they rode the heat for a few more minutes in companionable silence.
"What's your dream?" he asked at last, and she laughed lightly.
"No, tell me,"he insisted.
"There is this book. It's a novel I have thought about it for years. I have written it in my head a hundred times all I have to do is find the time and the place to write it on paper--2 she broke off, and then laughed again. "And then, of course, it sounds corny but I think about kids and a home. I have been travelling too long."
"I know what you mean." Jake nodded. "That's a good dream you've got, "he said thoughtfully. "Better than mine." Gareth Swales heard the murmur of their voices and raised himself on one elbow. For a while he thought seriously about crossing the dozen yards of sunbaked black stones to where they lay but the effort required was just too much and he fell back. A fist-sized rock jarred his kidneys and he cursed quietly.
It was five o'clock before Jake judged they could start the engines again. They refuelled from the cans strapped on the sponsons, and once more they set off in column at an agonized walking pace over the rough surface, each jolt shaking driver and vehicle cruelly.
Two hours later, the plain of black boulders ended abruptly, and beyond it stretched an area of low red sand hills. Thankfully Jake increased speed and the column sped towards a sunset that was inflamed by the dust-laden sky until it filled half the heavens with great swirls of purple and pink and flaming scar lets The desert wind dropped and the air was still and heavy with memory of the day's heat.
Each vehicle drew a long dark shadow behind it and threw up a fat rolling sausage of red dust into the air above it.
The night fell with the tropical suddenness that is alarming to those who have known only the gentle dusks of the northern continents.
Jake calculated that they had covered less than twenty miles in a day of travel and he was reluctant to call a halt, now that they had hit this level going and were bowling along with engine temperatures dropping in the cool of night and the drivers" tempers cooling in sympathy. Jake took a bearing off Orion's belt as the easiest constellation, then he switched on the headlights and looked back to see that the others had followed his example. The lights threw a brilliant path a hundred yards ahead of Jake's car, giving him plenty of time to avoid the odd thick clump of thorn scrub, and occasionally trapping a large grey desert hare, dazzling it so that its eyes blazed diamond bright before it turned and loped, long-legged, ahead of the car, seemingly unable to break out of the path of light, dodging and doubling with its long floppy ears laid along its back, until at the last instant it ducked out from under the wheels and dived into the darkness.
He was just deciding to call a halt for food and drink, with a possible further march later that night, when the sand hills dropped away gradually and in the headlights he saw ahead of him a glistening white expanse of perfectly level sand, as smooth and as inviting as the Brooklands motor-racing circuit.
Jake changed up into high gear for the first time that day, and the car plunged forward eagerly for a hundred yards before the thick hard crust of the salt pan collapsed and the heavy chassis fell through, belly deep, floundering instantly so that Jake was thrown violently forward at the abrupt halt, striking his shoulder and forehead painfully on the steel visor.
The engine shrieked in the frenzy of high revolutions and lifting valves before Jake recovered himself, then slammed the throttle closed.