through which he raced and the
dry gulping of his lungs was something dreadfully remote. But when a
bullet went past one ear, he heard that and drew more speed from some
unknown depth. A glance behind revealed his pursuers boiling out of
the house, men in gray with the hot sunlight blinking off their guns.

He ducked around a thicket, flopped and belly-crawled over a rise of
land. On the farther side he straightened again and ran up the long
slope. Another slug and another. They were almost a mile behind now
but their guns had a long reach. He bent low, zigzagging as he ran.
The bullets kicked up spurts of sand around him.

A six-foot bluff loomed in his path, black volcanic rock shining like
wet glass. He hit it at full speed. He almost _walked_ up its face and
in the instant when his momentum was gone caught a root and yanked
himself to the top. Again he was out of their sight. He sprang around
another hulk of stone and skidded to a halt. At his feet, a sheer
cliff dropped nearly a hundred feet to a white smother of surf.

Dalgetty gulped air, working his lungs like a bellows. A long jump
down, he thought dizzily. If he didn't crack his skull open on a reef
he might well be clawed under by the sea. But there was no other place
for him to go.

He made a swift estimate. He had run the upward two miles in a little
over nine minutes, surely a record for such terrain. It would take the
pursuit another ten or fifteen to reach him. But he couldn't double
back without being seen and this time they'd be close enough to fill
him with lead.

_Okay, son_, he told himself. _You're going to duck now, in more than
one sense._

His light waterproof clothes, tattered by the island growth, would be
no hindrance down there, but he took off his sandals and stuck them in
his belt pouch. Praise all gods, the physical side of his training had
included water sports. He moved along the cliff edge, looking for a
place to dive. The wind whined at his feet.

There--down there. No visible rocks though the surf boiled and smoked.
He willed full energy back into himself, bent his knees, jack-knifed
into the air.

The sea was a hammer blow against his body. He came up threshing and
tumbling, gasped a mouthful of air that was half salt spray, was
pulled under again. A rock scraped his ribs. He took long strokes,
always upward to the blind white shimmer of light. He got to the crest
of one wave and rode it in, surfing over a razorback reef.