17

Pringle’s unexpected visit in Barstow had taken the sparkle out of the beautiful morning. Suddenly Page and Sunny noticed it was very hot and dry. They didn’t talk about Pringle, with a tacit understanding that it would only have led to lower spirits and perhaps a fight.

“Come on,” Page said, leading her out to the rented dark blue Ford. He backed out toward the highway.

“Let’s do something fun,” Sunny said. “Let’s go see something interesting.”

“What’s to see, sweetheart?”

She had taken a travel guide map from the glove compartment and was studying the territory. They drove along while Sunny mentioned various oddities marked on the map; old mines, great dry lakes, craters. Page dismissed them all as tourist traps.

“Darling, let’s get off this dreary highway and see something,” Sunny pleaded. “This is supposed to be a honeymoon. Don’t let your father ruin this, too.”

“Okay, honey, you win,” he said half-heartedly. “What’s the next stop on the map?”

“Amboy Crater,” she said. “And Bristol Dry Lake.” He made a face.

“Well, it says ‘Point of Interest’ on the map,” she said.

With a sigh he turned south off Route 66 at Amboy, a scarcely noticeable desert town, and went a mile or two to the crater. Sunny made him stop so she could get out and look.

The crater loomed, black and ancient, in a plateau of iron-hard rock, all of it weather-cracked, split, and dried like a diseased sea. It spread out for miles, rising about six feet above the desert floor, and all around the edges dead black fingers of lava rock probed the sand.

“Just think, it came out of that crater once, like the sea in hell,” Sunny said, awed.

“Gives me the creeps,” Page told her. “Come on, let’s find something cheerful.”

“How about the Dry Lake? It’s only half a mile further,” she said.

It was not much to see. Not as dramatic and eerie as the old crater. Just miles of flat, dry, hard-baked mud. They got off the road and drove around on it for a while.

“Make a good race-track,” Page commented. “Gosh, it’s big.”

“Only about eight miles long on the map,” Sunny said. But when she looked up it seemed as if they were completely surrounded by cracked mud. It was all one could see in four directions, except way out in the crystal distance where the violet mountains rose.

“I wonder if anything lives out here?” Sunny asked.

“Nothing with any sense,” he said. “Had enough?” And he turned the car around.

“Where are our tracks?” Sunny said, peering over the hood.

“You don’t make tracks on this stuff, it’s like so much cement.”

They drove a little farther. “We’re kind of low on gas, aren’t we?” Sunny said, glancing at the meter.

“It’s not far, honey, just a couple of miles. We’ll make it.”

“We ought to be back on that road by now. I’m afraid we’ve gone past it,” Sunny fretted.

Page had not realized how low the gas was, as a matter of fact, preoccupied as he was with his father. Sunny fell silent, trusting him. But ten minutes later Page began to notice that the terrain looked different. It was not as smooth as the lake bed. Rocks and clumps of tough weeds studded the ground. He figured he had enough gas for another ten or twelve miles, and glanced at Sunny beside him in the front seat. She was sweating freely, but she didn’t look frightened.

Suddenly a sharp report jolted the front of the car. Page stopped as fast as he could and leaped out to see the damage. He looked under the hood and abruptly fell to his knees at the side of the car, trying to wrench a hub cap off. Sunny heard him banging and leaned out his window. “Can I help?” she said.

“The keys!” He grabbed them from her hand and opened the trunk, coming forward quickly with a lug wrench. But he was too late.

Mystified, Sunny said, “What’s the matter, darling?”

“It’s all right,” he said, but his face was worried.

He sat down in the driver’s seat, trying to wipe the wrinkles off his forehead. “Damnedest thing. I guess we hit a loose rock. Bounced up and struck the fan and bent one of the blades.”

“Is that bad?”

“I’m afraid so, honey. The blade sheared the radiator tubing. We’ve lost all our water. I was hoping to catch some of it in the hub cap.”

“What can we do?” She was more scared than she wanted him to know. The desert is haunted with ghastly tales of the uninformed and unprepared.

“I guess we can drive a way without it,” Page said. “We can’t be more than half a mile from that road.” And yet he knew that at some point they had driven out of the lake, and God only knew where they were now. He prayed they weren’t going around in a fatal, sandy circle.

Resolutely he started up again. There was no road, no sign, no hut, no human being. Nothing but bigger rocks and softer sand.

The sand, in fact, was becoming treacherous to drive on. Inevitably, the car gave a mushy jolt and began to slow down.

“Is the gas gone?” Sunny said.

“No. Damn sand,” he muttered. As he spoke the car sank to a standstill. Page gunned the motor a few times and cut it off. “No sense wasting what’s left,” he said. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Darling, don’t be afraid. We’re so close to civilization, we can’t go too far wrong.”

“We were close,” she said.

He squeezed her knee and then got out. “You stay there and try not to sweat,” he told her. “I never let my pregnant wives pull the plow.”

But his cheerful mood faded rapidly. He labored in the unblinking sun for almost two hours, digging tracks under the wheels, shoving while Sunny tried to back out, creating traction out of bath towels and deflated tires.

“Worse than shoveling maple syrup,” he gasped to Sunny, tearing the shirt off his hot back. The air he was inhaling so hard felt like steam in his lungs. By the time they got out of the hole he was trembling with heat and fatigue.

“Move over, sweetheart, let’s get out of here,” he said, sliding into the driver’s seat.

“On half a gallon of gas?” she said. “Besides, all the sand looks the same. You can’t tell the soft from the hard.”

“We’ll try another direction,” he said, heading in what he judged was a northerly route. “I think this will have us back on 66 in no time.” He could sense that she wanted to believe him, and he fell silent, afraid anything more he might say would only scare her. He felt his limbs quaking and his heart working overtime, and he didn’t know what he would do if they got stuck again.

“You’re awfully tired, darling, I can tell,” Sunny said softly.

“I’m not in shape for pushing cars across the desert,” he cracked. He was painfully thirsty. She must be, too.

The ground became progressively rougher, with big outcroppings of rock here and there. Through them Page threaded a cautious trail. Sunny studied the map.

“It shows rocks for a hundred miles in all directions,” she said. “We could be just about anywhere.”

“That’s a big help.”

“I thought you said we were going back to 66,” she said.

“Well, I think we are, sweetheart. But I’m not sure.”

“Oh, Page,” she whispered and he took her hand and held it hard, trying to encourage her. “At least the sun’s going down,” she said bravely. “It won’t be so hot.”

Then the engine coughed and there was a grinding wrench along the underside of the car. Page stopped and opened the door in almost the same motion. He dropped to his knees in the sand and slid under the motor to see what had happened. Moments later he emerged, dusty and splattered. Sunny didn’t dare ask him what he had found.

“Well, we’ve run over a goddam rock,” he said angrily. “There’re so many after a while you just don’t notice them.”

“It can’t be too bad,” she said hopefully.

“No. It just pierced the crankcase housing, that’s all.”

“Can you fix it?” Her voice was small and scared.

“All the oil has poured out. Also, the motor’s had it, without water. I’m afraid this buggy is finished,” he said. He spoke matter-of-factly, but for the first time since he realized they were lost, he was genuinely frightened.

Wearily he climbed up on the seat beside her. “We shouldn’t have rented this car, we should have bought it,” he said. “At least we could collect the insurance.”

She burst into tears. “Page,” she wept, and he took her in his arms. “What will we do?”

“Rest. And save our strength. Did we bring anything to eat? Or drink?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Not one crumb. And I even thought of asking you to pick up a six-pack of beer in that lunch place.”

They thought about the cold wet beer for a moment and then he said with a vigor he didn’t feel, “In the morning I’m going to try to walk back.”

“And leave me here in this wilderness?” she cried, terrified. “Darling, you’ll get lost. We might be fifty miles from the road.” She clung to him in a panic, but he only held her, unwilling to give up the idea.

Hungry, thirsty, exhausted, they huddled together in the car while the vast world of hot rocks and sand around them began to cool.

“Let’s try to sleep,” he said. “Here, honey, get in the back seat and lie down. You can use that blanket in your bag.”

“I’d rather have an air conditioner,” she said. “What about you, darling? Where will you sleep?”

“Under the car, I guess,” he said, covering her.

“Aren’t there snakes?” she asked.

“If there are, they’re cooked.” He took her hand. “I’ll be all right, sweetheart. You go to sleep.”

She lay in the uncomfortably short back seat and tried to rest, while Page sat up for a while, wondering how to get them out of there. His overpowering worry was Sunny. How well could she bear up under that deadly sun?

Before he crawled under the car to sleep he leaned into the back seat and kissed her face tenderly. “Darling,” he whispered. “My love. Sleep tight.”

* * *

At the first sign of light Page sat up to watch the dawn. It was warm, with the temperature near ninety. The sun came out early, climbing up the sides of the distant hills. It surprised Page when he first saw the brightening sky. He had expected the sun from another direction. Sunny awoke in time to see his consternation.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

“The sun ... the damn thing does come up in the east, doesn’t it?”

“Ordinarily.” She stared at him.

“Then we’re headed west,” he said. “Not north. Back to L. A. God! If we keep on going pretty soon we’ll reach the ocean.”

“Or a lemonade stand,” she said wistfully.

He smiled at her. “You’re a good girl, Sunny,” he said. He spoke with such love that she bent and kissed his hair as he sat on the ground. His neck was scarlet and throbbing hot.

“Page, you got burned yesterday,” she said with concern.

“Not bad,” he lied. But his scalded skin had been robbed of water and oil, and from neck to waist he was a painful red.

Sunny lifted her head and gazed around the sand. “What are we going to do?” she asked.

“We’re going to get out of this damn oven,” he said, thumping the rear fender as he shoved himself to his feet. “Before it bakes us to a turn.”

She climbed out and shook herself carefully.

“How do you feel?” He was hyper-conscious of her condition.

“I’m all right, darling,” she said. She couldn’t start the day by telling him how thirsty and faint she was. She felt a kick in her abdomen and was momentarily overwhelmed with an uprush of love and anguish for the poor little creature she was carrying. Her fate was his. She would want to die if the baby didn’t live.

Page took her hand and led her to an outcropping of rock some forty yards from the car. The short walk made her tired. He settled her there, spreading the electric blanket under her to keep her off the sand, and sat down beside her.

“We ought to have some shade here for most of the morning,” he said, squinting at the high-rising rock. “In the afternoon we can move around to the other side.”

“What do we do at noon?” she said.

“We fry,” he answered briefly. He scanned the area with tightly narrowed eyes, standing up to look around. He couldn’t sit there on that sand and wait for the world to come rescue him. He had to do something.

In less than an hour they heard the buzz of a plane.

“God damn! Of course! I should have thought of that,” he cried, running back to the car. He wrenched the rear view mirror off its bracket and jumped out, holding the mirror toward the sun. A series of bright flashes resulted, but the plane, cruising over twenty thousand feet in that mountainous country, proceeded eastward indifferently.

Sunny discovered a package of gum in her purse and when Page came dejectedly back with the mirror, she shared it with him. It took them some time to soften it in their dry mouths, but the sugar tasted wonderful. Page took only one stick.

Sunny saved the rest. “Three sticks of Doublemint,” she said. “All our worldly goods. It makes me feel like crying.” The tears began to fall, and Page put his arms around her.

“Oh, I’m all right,” she said, ashamed of herself. “I guess it was seeing that plane. Those people up there, so cool and comfortable. Eating a big breakfast and looking out the window at all the damn rocks.”

“There must be a lot of air traffic around here,” Page said. “Hell, the big army bases, the commercial flights, private parties. I’m going to pile up a mess of stuff in that clear space in front of the car and the next time one goes over I’ll light it. Maybe it’ll fire up bright enough to catch somebody’s eye. I’ll have to use your clothes, honey. Okay?”

“Anything,” she said. She leaned back weakly against the rock shelf. It was hot in the shadow, the temperature rising steadily through the nineties. She looked at her watch: not quite nine A.M. Where will we be when it’s nine in the evening? she wondered. Oh, God, please save us. All three of us.

Page spent the next hour building a pyre out of their suitcases, their clothes, and a spare tire from the trunk. Afterward he found the towels he had used to get the wheels out of the sand and made an S with them. He walked over to Sunny and squatted beside her, wiping his sweaty face with a grimy cloth. “Sunny, I need the blanket,” he said.

“What for?” she asked, rolling off it without protest.

“I’m making an S O S in the sand over there. If they see the fire, they’ll come low enough to read the letters.”

He took out the pen knife he carried in his change pocket and, with Sunny’s help, cut the blanket into several strips. Sunny held it taut while Page sawed through the material.

“That should do it,” Page said a half-hour later, gathering up the long wool streamers and heading for the S made of towels. Sunny started to follow him but a sudden hard cramp sent her back to the ground.

For fifteen minutes, while Page worked on the distress signal she sat motionless, paralyzed with the pain. Her instinct recognized it. She had never had a baby before, but she knew that she had just had a labor pain.

She leaned against the rock, grateful for the shade, and told herself, I will be calm, over and over. Maybe it will go away. The books talk about false labor. I’ll sit here and take it easy.... If that little mite comes out here, it won’t live five minutes.

It didn’t occur to her that she wouldn’t, either. Her whole being revolved around that baby. Sunny had a lot of sense and a great desire to save her child. She forced herself to lie down on the sand and remain quiet. Time passed, one straggling second at a time, but the cramp did not repeat itself.

When Page came back she told him nothing.

“That’s it, darling,” he said. “Save yourself.”

“You, too,” she murmured. “Lie down, Page.”

He sat instead. They were both stunned with the sky-rocketing heat.

“How hot do you think it is?” Sunny asked. Little streams of sweat were trickling into her ears and down her breasts and arms.

“Seems hotter if you talk about it.” He scanned the shiny blue sky, shading his eyes with his left hand.

Page estimated it was well over a hundred degrees by then, but didn’t tell her so. “There might be some moisture left in the radiator,” he said. “Give me your hanky, I’ll soak it up.”

“If there is, it’ll be hot enough to brew coffee,” she said.

Page left her briefly. The heat pierced the soles of his shoes and traveled up his legs like shock waves, and the sun felt hot enough to melt his hair. He returned on shaky limbs with a pitiful small dampness. “Suck on it,” he told Sunny. “It’s all there was.” He stroked her cracking lips with it. They had not eaten or drunk now for twenty-four hours.

Sunny would have insisted on sharing the moisture with him had it not been for that cramp. Now she felt an obligation to be selfish.

Shortly another plane began to drone toward them. Sunny sat halfway up, searching the sky.

“There it is,” she said. “Quick, light the fire.”

“Too high,” he said, shaking his head. “Probably a jet.”

Sunny lay down as the plane passed, too faint to lower herself carefully. Page watched her drop back with worried eyes. He knelt and wiped her forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. The rising heat made her face pink, but it was not a healthy color.

“I might find a little water in these rocks somewhere,” he said. “There are mineral springs in the desert sometimes.”

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered, frightened. Her worst fear was to die abandoned on the sand.

“I’ll just go a short way and whistle so you’ll know where I am,” he promised. “Darling, I’ve got to try something. You need that water. It isn’t ten-thirty yet.” He didn’t need to remind her of her empty stomach or the dry fuzz forming on her tongue.

After a tired struggle with herself she said, “Keep whistling.”

“I will.” He kissed her, bending over her with his hands planted in the sand. His burned lips scratched her skin lightly. Then he got up and walked. In twelve minutes he was back.

“God. It’s a furnace out there,” he said.

“Find anything?”

“A few scraggly cactus plants. I tried one. Tasted like rotten vinegar.” He stretched out beside her in the narrow margin of shadow they had left as the sun sailed up the sky toward high noon.

Page made seven or eight trips altogether, whistling to comfort her. But he came back from the last search staggering from the furious heat. He looked at the yellow world prostrate under the sun, the savage sun that plainly meant to murder them. And he hated it illogically as though it had a human conscience.

Sunny was sitting up, huddled against the last few planes of shady rock. Already sunlight was slanting down the steep western slope and on the east there was no shadow at all.

Noon. The sun’s hour of hours.

Page dropped to his knees, panting. One swallow of water and he thought he could move mountains. He couldn’t leave Sunny here in the blaze of the hammering heat. Her eyes were clenched shut and her face was taut.

“Darling,” he said from a sandy throat.

“No water?” she whispered.

He shook his head, taking her in his arms. She half-collapsed against him. “I’m so thirsty,” she admitted out of her weakness.

“Where’s that gum?” He fumbled in the purse and pulled out a stick. “Here, honey. It’s not wet but there’s a little sugar in it.”

“I’m so dry,” she murmured.

“Try. Come on.” She worked on it for some minutes and finally it began to yield. It tasted pathetically good. She chewed all the sweetness out of it and then swallowed the whole lump. Perhaps the hunger pangs could be fooled for a minute.

“I’m going to take you back to the car and we’ll lie underneath it, till we’ve got more shade here,” he said.

She let him pull her unsteadily to her feet. He started out, guiding her slowly and carefully. But about halfway to the car she suddenly folded in the middle. He caught her and carried her the rest of the way, laying her on the sand when he got there and pushing her under the car. Then he slid in beside her.

Page put a hand on Sunny’s leg, close beside his, but their mutual heat was unbearable and he had to remove it. The pulsing air swirled and waved up from the desert floor, liquid orange with heat. It crushed their chests and stuffed their burning noses and drained the vital fluids from their flesh.

Another plane went over. Page scrambled out to look.

“It’s pretty low,” he called, and ran over to the bonfire site, lighting the inflammable clothes first. They caught at once and Page stepped back. It seemed insane to add even this small heat to the radiant desert, but it couldn’t be helped.

The plane was small, probably private, and not impossibly high. An alert pair of eyes, studying the desert floor, might catch that fluttering light.

But it was only a matter of minutes before Page realized they hadn’t seen. They were going on.

He watched them go, fighting off despair. The fire had reached its peak. There was no way to save it now for another try. He stood with his head in his hands—the Pringle gesture Sunny knew so well—and tried to compose himself for her sake. He had been in tight places before, but always by himself, and always with a way out.

He crawled under the car again. “It’s two-thirty,” he told her at last. “When the sun gets a little lower I’ll take you back to the rock. Could you chew another piece of gum?”

“No,” she whispered.

He didn’t press her, but he was afraid her mouth would be so dry that even the tiny jot of sugar in the gum would be inaccessible to her before long: so much powder on her tongue.

“We might as well go now,” he said.

Carefully, he dragged Sunny after him, out from under the car, and saw at once that she was dangerously weak. There was no possibility of her walking back to the shade of the rock. The safest way to move her was to pull her, and Page fashioned a cloth sled out of the blanket strips in his S O S. He laid her on it tenderly and towed her as fast as he could force himself to move over the sand to the rock.

He fell down beside her in exhaustion and slept for a while. When he awoke it seemed as if centuries had passed. He lifted his head, only to feel an alarming dizziness come over him. He lowered it at once and a few minutes later tried again. It was better this time. It was still daylight, still stupefyingly hot. Five minutes after three. The terrible sun stuck jealously in the sky.

The rock Page leaned against rose twelve or thirteen feet from the ground. It was a bad shape for climbing, but new hope made him get up and try.

The thing had a number of sheer walls and a couple of rough ones, with few spots for secure footing or handholds. Page chose the best side and started doggedly up.

It seemed to the eyes like a short way to the top, but to his limbs and lungs it was a taxing struggle all the way. Page fell back twice before he collapsed on the sharp summit. The burning stone cut his midriff. Quickly he lifted himself up for a look, dizzy again with the climb and the endless blasting heat. He straddled the thin ridge and looked around.

Rocks and sand ... rocks and sand ... black rocks and yellow sand.... The car, the broken S O S, the pile of useless ashes where the fire had been. It didn’t look promising.

He climbed down, letting himself fall most of the way into the soft sand. Sunny was a strange flushed color, breathing noisily, lying quite still. He thought of Richie Settick. Perhaps Sunny was weaker than Page wanted to believe. He needed to hear her voice.

“It’s after four now,” he said. “Sun’ll go down soon.”

Her lips began to work and he leaned very close to hear her. “This is hell,” she said with the merest flutter of breath behind her words. “The sun never sets in hell. You have to look at your mistakes in broad daylight for the rest of eternity. You have to burn straight through until you’re pure.”

“I’m going to get you out of here,” he said. “Sunny, do you hear me?”

“It’s too late,” she moaned.

“My God, darling, what do you mean? We’re alive, aren’t we?”

“It doesn’t matter, Page,” she said. He had to read her lips to grasp her meaning. She made almost no sound. “The baby....” She put a hand across her stomach. “I think it’s ... dead.”

He was stricken silent. After a tortured pause he said, “How do you know?”

“Doesn’t move.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s dead. Sunny, I won’t let you give up. Sunny, Sunny, I love you so,” he said. “Darling, this isn’t any supernatural punishment we’re going through. If I weren’t such a stupid jerk we wouldn’t be here, and I’m going to do something about it.” She smiled wanly and tried to quiet him but he said, “No, I have to tell you now,” and she knew he meant there might not be another chance. So she listened in silence.

“Sunny, there isn’t any right or wrong any more,” he said. “There’s only life. And love. To live is right, to die is wrong. Nothing else makes sense. There is no logic but love. No morality but survival.”

He kissed her captive hand and spoke again with his mouth moving against her skin. “Darling, all I understood these past few months was that you were my sister. When I knew that, it was as if you stopped existing as a wife. You were my own flesh and blood and everything else came second: love, happiness, the baby—everything. But I was wrong, Sunny. And I damned near ruined both our lives.”

She was so moved and heartened to hear him talk this way that she found herself almost willing to hope again for a miracle. Her eyes, green drops in her tired face, remained fastened on him.

“Now that I know where I was wrong, the rest falls into place,” he said, putting his head down in the sand next to hers. “... I climbed the rock here,” he told her. “But everything looks the same. Just a few more rocks to the north. That’s the only—” He stopped talking, feeling a jerk of pressure in her hand. “What, honey?”

“66—is north,” she whispered.

“Yeah, but how far? A day’s walk? Two days? I can’t leave you that long,” he said.

“You must have seen the lava bed ... the black rocks....”

“No, the bed looks like a big strip of dusty tar. This was just more stones.”

“But the stones—get thicker—near the bed. The crater—”

“Sunny, we’ve left that lava bed maybe thirty or forty miles behind us.”

“Check the map. There’s another bed,” she panted.

“Another one?” He came to life, lurched to his feet, and weaved back to the car. The map was still on the front seat. Page opened it, moving and seeing somewhat like a drunk. His eyes were unfocussed for a moment, but he finally found Amboy Crater where they had turned off the big highway. He ran a finger slowly in a westerly direction, the way they must have taken. The terrain was represented as rugged and rocky. And sure enough, maybe thirty-five miles from Amboy, lay another lava bed: a long thin one with its own crater, which intersected Route 66.

“My God, we must have crossed right over it. I never even saw it,” he said to himself. If that mass of black rocks to the north was really it, they might be as close as three or four miles to 66. Or as far as ten miles. Either way, it seemed suddenly possible to reach it.

Page looked up at the sky. The sun was sliding down the western side toward the blue peaks. He judged the temperature to be still well over a hundred degrees. In another two hours, without the pitiless sun up there, he might be able to start walking—if that was in fact the lava bed ahead. But in the fast-falling desert dark he might also lose his way, and lose Sunny too.

He stared northward, balancing his chances. We can’t live through another day, he thought. I have to do it now, while I can still see.

“I’m going up to the highway,” he said in her ear. “You were right, that bed can’t be far. I’m starting now, so we can get you out of here this evening. You can’t take any more sun tomorrow. Do you understand? Sweetheart, don’t be afraid. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Go,” she murmured, unprotesting. “I’m in labor.”

Page couldn’t disguise the shock and alarm on his face. “Dear God! I can’t leave you now. You can’t have that baby alone, Sunny.”

“Pains ... still far apart,” she said laboriously. “Won’t be for a while ... hours, maybe. Phone Settick.” It hurt to talk; she was afraid of triggering another cramp.

“I’ll get an ambulance and call the doctor,” he said, recovering himself a little. “There must be a good hospital in Barstow. You’re going to be all right, darling.” He kissed her mouth. “When we get out of here—I’ll never leave you again,” he whispered.

She watched him rise, tying her white handkerchief around his neck. He set out after one last look at her, wrapping a towel around his head like a turban.

Page walked, as nearly as he could judge, straight north. He thought of nothing but Sunny ... Sunny, his wife ... alone and sick and terrified in the small shade of a rock. He thought of the pains she was experiencing, and the baby.

Every fifty yards or so he turned back to look at her big brown rock. The car soon disappeared from view, and little by little the rock sank with it. Ahead he searched for the low black shelf that would mark the border of the lava bed.

He stumbled forwards in this manner, half afraid his heart would collapse like punctured plastic beneath his ribs. It was about seven o’clock, with the sun nearly hidden at last behind the hills, when he saw the headlights of a car.

Page stood blinking at them in a near-stupor. At first he thought he was gazing at a mirage. They seemed to be coming right toward him, though they were still far away. But abruptly they swerved and headed east.

“No! No!” he croaked. “Over here!” For a sickening instant he thought his first and last real hope had evaporated. But another pair of headlights materialized about where the first had, followed by several more in quick succession. And then some coming from the east and traveling west.

“The road!” He fell on his knees and wept. And suddenly lifted a bewildered head. Where was the lava bed? He rose shakily to his feet and turned around twice before he saw the black table to the east.

It must be the second bed, all right. We came back so far we overshot it, he thought.

He ran forward to the highway, dropping the towel as he went. It had only taken him, weak and lost as he was, three hours to reach the road. Sunny couldn’t be far behind him at that rate.