It was no use relying on the traffic lights: the Moskwicz would cross on the red if it had to, even in snow conditions. Unless I did something to change the pattern we’d head slowly for the station and with every yard we’d be heading away from the bus depot where Ferris was waiting and I couldn’t let it go on for too long because the Moskwicz had a radio and they’d bring in mobile support: they’d have to.

I didn’t want to wait for them to do that.

“Are we going to get more snow?” I asked the driver.

“What was that, comrade?”

There was a glass division, grimed and cracked and repaired with adhesive tape, and he cocked his head towards the opening.

“Is there more snow on the way?”

“It says so, on the radio. From the south-west. But I can tell you, we don’t need it!”

Checking, checking. Blank.

Of course if you wait for a chance you may never get it but if you decide to make one for yourself you can often use the environment even if it presents only one positive feature. The alley was on the right as he braked for the lights and when I looked round I saw there was still another car between the taxi and the Moskwicz so I waited another two seconds for the speed to go down to a crawl and then I hit the door open and got out and swung it shut and the driver didn’t start shouting before I was across the pavement and into the alley, running some of the way and sliding the rest. A flare of headlights came and my own shadow flew ahead of me: they’d slung the Moskwicz across the pavement and lit up the scene and I heard a door snap open and then another one and there were three shadows now, two of them enormous and flitting like giant bats across the face of the building as I got half-way and tripped on something frozen under the snow and went headlong, sliding head-first and hitting the wall with my hands and bouncing away, get up, sliding across to the other side while the bats hovered in the dazzle of the lamps and I hit out with one hand to stop the momentum, get upthey’re coming, another door banging and a shadow bigger than the others and the sound of running feet.

Got up and got going and found sand near the end of the alley but the shadows were smaller now and therefore closer and I knew I’d blown it because the terrain was the biggest hazard and there wasn’t anything I could do about it, their footsteps very close in the confines, thudding behind me, no go, it was no go.

Ferris. They didn’t get Ferris. I’d kept him clean.

Feet flying and the street empty when I got to the corner and turned to the right, slithering and fetching up against a lamp standard and using it to change direction, empty except for a car moving towards the intersection and a bus starting off within a few yards of the alley, its doors shut against the cold and its windows steaming and not a hope in hell of jumping on, but the rear wheels were spinning on the snow in spite of the chains and I let my own momentum take me across the kerb and then I had to be careful because if I got it wrong it was going to be nasty: the rear end of the bus was sliding into the gutter and the wheels were churning for grip in the piled snow and I had to throw myself flat on my back and kick at the kerb and slide underneath the thing before it got under way, hooking my hands upwards and hitting the muffler and burning them, hooking again and finding a strut running sideways across the chassis, a strut and a brake rod that flexed under my weight but held me until I could find a purchase on one of the cross-members, my feet dragging now as the wheels got a grip and the bus moved faster, swinging out from the kerb and getting into second gear and accelerating again, the heat of the exhaust pipe against my face and its sound throbbing, beginning to deafen me.

I didn’t know what the chances were: either they’d seen me or they hadn’t. They might have shouted to the driver but I wouldn’t have heard them because of the exhaust and the driver wouldn’t have heard them because the doors were shut and his window would be up; in any case it was academic: if they’d seen me they’d go back to the Moskwicz and head off the bus and I couldn’t drop off now because I could hear traffic coming up from the rear and it sounded like a truck or an army transport with heavy-duty tyres and no chains, keeping pace and sending a flush of light reflecting upwards from the snow against the mud caked chassis just above my head.

It was a strictly shut-ended situation because I didn’t know how much traffic there was behind the bus and it was going to depend on how long I could hang on like this: given a run of three or four green lights I’d have to drop and if I dropped I might just miss the wheels of the truck behind but there might be a whole line of traffic and sooner or later there’d be a blood-red smear on the snow, finis.

My heels were dragging on sand now and I kicked upwards with one foot and hooked it sideways and felt nothing and kicked again and got it lodged across a brake rod but it slipped off and I tried the other foot, feeling for a cross-member and not finding one, trying again and hitting the open propeller-shaft and letting it drop back to the roadway. Technically my heels were taking some of the weight and relieving the strain on my fingers but there was sand along this stretch and my shoes could wear through and I didn’t know what was going to happen in the next fifteen minutes: I might have to run for my life and I could lose it if a shoe came off.

Tried with my hands next, feeling for a girder where I could hook one arm through and hold the wrist to lock it in position, but I was too far forward and my face was just to the rear of the gearbox with one of the universal joints spinning within an inch of my head and if I moved too much the bolts would cut into the skull like a circular rasp: it wasn’t worth risking so I let my body hang limp and began waiting out the time, it was all I could do.

Oil was dripping against my face and I turned it slightly to let it run downwards, clear of my eye. There was a leak in the exhaust pipe and the fumes were acrid and sickly, setting up an irritation in my throat that I tried to control by swallowing. The deep-cut tyres of the truck behind us were sending out a moan as they ran across the hard-packed snow and I could see other lights now, showing beneath its silhouette: there was a line of traffic, possibly a military convoy, and somewhere in the din of the exhaust pipe I could hear their chains jingling on the snow.

My fingers were burning now with the strain of hanging on.

Ignore.

The oil dripped again and I turned my face away, feeling it creep down to the lobe of my ear. I was taking shallow breaths to keep the carbon monoxide out of my lungs but the muscles were working hard from the ringers to the shoulders and demanding oxygen and I began breathing more deeply because I couldn’t help it: there was no equation possible and at some distant point my hands would lose their grip because the gas had swamped the brain or because the muscles ran out of oxygen, one way or the other. If I could -

Slowing, we were slowing.

No brakes yet: the rod against my shoulder hadn’t moved. Just a gradual deceleration with the exhaust note snarling lower on the over-run as the cylinders went dead.

Assume traffic lights.

Fingers burning but hanging on. If I dropped too soon there’d be nothing to save me: the truck couldn’t pull up on this kind of surface even if the driver saw me and if I tried rolling to the kerb I could get it wrong and his front wheel would -

The exhaust was throbbing again and the whine of the universals rose to their normal pitch and I saw the faint green spread of light on the snow along the gutter as the bus got up speed and the traffic behind followed suit: the lights had been at red and the driver had started slowing and they’d changed to green and I’d have to keep hanging on and I didn’t think I could do it now because a muscle is electro-chemical and the will can push its limits but not to infinity.