"You've seen the Machine's order," purred Donna Creery, and waved a strip of factape.
"Oh," said the surgeon hastily, "of course, Miss Creery. You know I wouldn't—But it's most irregular, all the same."
Donna nodded coldly and beckoned to Ryeland. "The Machine does not have to be regular," she said. "Now show us how to get to my rocket."
They were out of the clinic beyond the wall, out to a landing pit. And there was Donna Creery's rocket speedster, squatting on its fins. The girl whispered: "Chiquita!"
Ryeland said strongly, "Wait a minute, Miss Creery. Where are you taking me?"
She looked at him thoughtfully. "I have orders from the Machine," she said after a moment. "They direct me to take you to another Heaven, where you are needed for a rush repair job on an important member of the Planning Staff."
"That sounds peculiar," he protested.
"Oh, very. Chiquita!" The girl stamped her foot and glared into the ship.
There was a golden movement inside, then a faint blue luminous haze.
The spaceling floated out.
Its tawny eyes were fixed worshipfully on Donna Creery. It wriggled felinely in the air, curled, spun—in pure joy, it seemed—and halted, poised in the air, before her.
Ryeland started to speak. "Shut up," whispered the girl. "There isn't time to argue. You've got to get out of here before they come to take you back."
"Back? But why should they do that? The travel orders from the Machine—"
"—are forged." She met his gaze calmly. "Yes. I forged them myself, so I should know. So the surgeon will be looking for you, as soon as he gets around to filing a routine report of compliance with the Machine. And that will be—what would you say? Five minutes?"
"But I don't understand!"
? "You don't have to understand!" the girl blazed. "There isn't time! I'm trying to save your life. Also-" she hesitated. "Truthfully there's another reason. My father needs you."
"The Planner? But—but—why would he have to forge orders from the Machine?"
"I can't tell you now." She stared around. No one was in sight. She said grimly, "Heaven help you if anything goes wrong. I can't take you in my rocket; there isn't room. Anyway, that's the first place they'll look. I don't think they'll bother me. But if you're there—" She shrugged.
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
"Do?" she cried. "Why get on Chiquita's back! What do you think I brought her for? Just get on—she knows where to take you!"
Ryeland rode the spaceling; it was like mounting a running stream.
A slim golden shape, more slender than a seal, floating in the air; gold, pure gold that blended into black at the tail, it was the strangest mount a man ever bestrode. Donna said a quick word of command. The spaceling purred faintly, rippled its lazy muscles and whoom. It was like a muffled slap of metal. Suddenly they had leaped a hundred feet into the air.
There was no shock, no crushing blow of acceleration. There was just a quick vibrant lift, and they were high in the air.
Through the thin coveralls that were his only garment Ryeland felt the purring vibration of the spaceling's body. Down below he saw the Planner's daughter already entering her rocket. She did not intend to wait for trouble. The jets flared. Ryeland heard the sound—but it was receding, receding although the rocket had already begun to climb; they were climbing too, and fast. Ryeland was breathless. He clung to the spaceling. There was no pressure; only his arms held him to that bare, warm, smooth back. His stomach fluttered. His breathing caught. Down below he saw men moving, insects on the lawn and the walks. But they were not looking up, probably couldn't see him if they did; it was still night, and the hovering helicopters, with their floodlights were between him and the ground.
They were nearly a thousand feet in the air now. Donna's rocket, a black dot in the center of its own petaled flame, seemed plastered against the concrete of the pit below. Only the fact that its size stayed constant showed that it was following them; then even it began to dwindle.
Off to the northeast was a storm, the warning cirrus veil across the sky, the dark towering cumulonimbus, the rain squalls already marching across the dark mountains of Cuba. The spaceling turned toward the storm. "Wait!" cried Ryeland. "Don't go into that!" But the spaceling didn't understand, or wouldn't. It purred warmly, like a fat kitten, and arrowed toward the menacing cloud with its violent gusts.
And still Ryeland felt no motion.
All his body was accelerated uniformly by the spaceling's field, whatever it was. The air came with them, the pocket which the spaceling wore like a halo, its blue shroud of faintly glowing light. Their flight was not quite noiseless, though nearly; the only sound was a faint distant tearing, though they were barreling through the sky at surely sonic speed. Incredible! Ryeland's mathematician's mind fitted pieces together; the spaceling, he thought, must form a capsule which instantly shapes itself to meet the resistance—forming the perfect streamline shape for its needs, blunt teardrop at a hundred miles an hour, needle as it approached sound's speed, probably wasp-waisted area-rule profile at higher speeds.
And still there was no sense of motion, though Heaven had dropped away behind them and was gone.
Now they were over water. All around them was cloud. They were hurtling into the furious wall of towering thunderstorms that was the forefront of a hurricane.
Cold rain drenched him in an instant. That was curious, thought the objective, never-stilled part of his mind; rain penetrated the capsule where the rush of air did not! But there was no time to think of it. The rain was pelting ice-water, uncomfortable, chilling. It disturbed the spaceling, too. Its satisfied purr changed to a complaining mew; it shook and shuddered. But it plunged on.
Ryeland was hopelessly lost.
The storm was the same in all directions, a dim void of fog and icy water, flickering with distant lightning. But the spaceling knew where it was going ... he hoped.
They drilled through the top of the clouds and came out above them into clear air. Underneath them the shape of the storm revealed itself in a great spiral, the hurricane wheeling around its open eye. A bright light burst on him. It was the sun, rising again on the western horizon—they were that high! It was a blaze of incandescence in the dark; and still they climbed.
A great elation possessed Ryeland.
He had done the impossible! He had escaped, with all his limbs and faculties, from the hell they called Heaven!
He was no longer a numbered carcass; he was a man again. And Donna Creery had done it, where he had failed; he owed her something. He wondered briefly what it was she had failed to tell him about her father; then dismissed it. That wonder was lost in the greater soaring wonder of free flight. The sky was black around them—surely the air was thin now. And still they climbed, while the vast hazy floor of sea and cloud became visibly convex.
And still they climbed; and the air was thin now.
That was all wrong! Ryeland knew that much; the spaceling's field should hold the air. But the creature itself was gasping now, panting. Its purring and mewing had turned into the choking cough of a tiger. They still climbed, but Ryeland could feel the creature falter.
They were at a dangerous altitude. Suddenly he was breathless. His drenched body was chilled through, even in the white, bright glare of the naked sun.
It was the spaceling's wounds that were endangering them now, Ryeland realized. Gottling's torture chamber had left its marks. The creature's symbiotes had, been destroyed, or some of them had. Its fusorians that gave it power, its parasitic Reef animalcules that made it possible for a warm-blooded air-breather to live in space in the first place, their numbers had been greatly diminished. They were not all gone, for there was still some air. It filled his grasping lungs, kept his body fluids from boiling out, screened him at least a little from the cold and the even more deadly UV of the sun. There was some air . . . but was there enough?