The truck skimmed away. It was slower than the tanks and it was not as well cushioned against the ground, for it was now running very underloaded.

Jonnie held on, his head ducked below the forward cab level. The eighty-mile-an-hour wind of passage roared over his head and against the truck's upright stakes.

He was thinking fast. Somehow he could play this so as to get the truck as well. It s controls weren't any different, of that he was certain from the quick glance he had had. All Psychlo controls were simple levers and buttons.

What a relief it would be to get rid of this collar. His heart was thudding expectantly. Once again, if he made no mistakes, he would be free!

It was no more than 1:00 when they thudded to a halt outside the library in the town. Terl got out, shaking the vehicle with his weight.

He was still conversational when he unfastened the leash. “See anything of your horse?”

“Not a thing,” said Jonnie.

“Too bad, animal. This truck is the very thing to carry a horse, or ten horses for that matter.”

Terl went to the library door and with a tool undid the lock. He gave the leash a yank and sent Jonnie in ahead of him.

The place was a quiet tomb of dust, the interior the same as Jonnie had last seen it. Terl was looking around.

“Ha!” said Terl. “So that's how you got in before!” He was pointing to the disturbed dust under a window and the unchanged impressions of footprints across the floor. “You even put the guard screens back! Well,” he added, looking around, “let's find data on the western mountains.”

Jonnie was aware of the changes in himself. Those blotches of white he had seen before were signs, very plain and easy to read. He saw that his previous visit had occurred beside the “Children's Section” and that the shelves he had first approached were marked “Child Educational.”

“Wait a minute,” said Terl. “I don't think you know how to read a library index. Come over here, animal.” He yanked on the leash he had let run long. He was standing by stacks of small drawers. He bent over and opened one. “According to the Chinkos, every book has a card and the cards are in here in these drawers.

Alphabetical. Got it?”

Jonnie looked at the drawers. Terl had pulled one out that was all "Q." The cards were musty and grayed but readable. “Anything there about mountains?” said Terl.

Tense as he was, Jonnie had to repress a smile. Here was more proof that Terl couldn't read English. “The drawer you have there is about vehicles,” said Jonnie.

“Yes, I can see that,” said Terl. “Go through it and find 'mountains.' " He moved off, elaborately interested in some ancient posters on the wall, holding the leash.

Jonnie started opening drawers. Some were stuck; others had their front tabs missing. But he finally found the drawers for "M." He began to go through the cards. He came to “Modern Military Science.”

"I’ve found something,” said Jonnie. “May I have a pen to write the numbers?”

Terl handed him a pen several sizes too big for Jonnie's hand and then gave him some folded sheets. Terl wandered off again. Jonnie wrote down the numbers of several books.

“I have to go over to the shelves now,” said Jonnie. And Terl paid out more line.

After a little while, and after a minor battle with a ladder that had sunk into and stuck to the floor, Jonnie got up to a higher shelf and raised the protective sheet. In a moment he was swiftly scanning through a section of a book headed Defense Systems of the United States.

“Anything about mountains?” said

Terl. Jonnie bent down and showed him a page entitled "MXI Anti-Nuclear

Silos.”

“Yep,” said Terl.

Jonnie handed him the book. “We better take this one. There's some more.”

In rapid order he fought the ladder along the shelves and took out another half-dozen books: Nuclear Physics, Congressional Hearings on Missile Installations, The Scandals of Nuclear Mismanagement, Nuclear Deterrent Strategy, Uranium – Hope or Hell, and Nuclear Waste and Pollution. There were more but he felt rushed, and the seven books were heavy for a man about to run.

“I don't see any pictures,” said Terl.

Jonnie quickly pushed the ladder along. He grabbed a book, Colorado,

Scenic Wonderland, glanced at it, and gave it to Terl.

“That's more like it, animal.” Terl was pleased with the gorgeous views of mountains, particularly since many were purple and the aging ink had turned bluish. “More like it.”

Terl put the books in a sack. “Let's see if we can locate the relief map.” He gave the leash a yank that almost tumbled Jonnie off the ladder. But

Terl didn't lead the way to another floor right then. He wandered over to the door first and seemed to be listening. Then he came back and went up some stairs.

There was a relief map laid out on display, possibly not a permanent fixture. Terl knelt down and looked at it searchingly.

Jonnie, keyed up as he was, was made very uneasy by the colored relief map. It showed the nearby mountains very accurately by his estimation. The passes and Highpeak were plain. And there was the meadow of the village in plain sight. Of course the map had been made ages before there was a village. But still, there it was. It made Jonnie nervous. He knew the recon drone must have spotted it long since and that Terl undoubtedly had pictures of it.

There, also, was the long canyon, and

Jonnie knew he was looking at the location of what he had taken to be an ancient tomb. He looked as closely as he could without calling it to Terl's attention. No, there was no tomb or anything else marked at the head of that canyon. As a slight diversion, he traced out with his finger some of the letters: ROCKY MOUNTAINS, PIKE'S PEAK, MOUNT VAIL.

Then he saw that he needn't have bothered to dissemble. Terl's attention was glued on a deep, long canyon. A talon was carefully tracing a cliff face and the river below it. The monster, seeing Jonnie was watching, quickly traced some other canyons in the same way. But he came back to that one canyon.

Terl stiffened for a moment, head jerking up. Then he became very bland. “Seen all you want, animal?”

Jonnie was happy to get him away from the relief map. It was too much like Terl staring down at Jonnie's people.

Terl went down the stairs toward the front door, pools of ancient dust stirring as he walked.

The sound of their footsteps had obscured it. Jonnie was certain he heard the hoofstrike of a horse!

Terl was standing just outside the library, looking down the grass-grown street.

Jonnie shifted his position to see what Terl was looking at. He went rigid with shock.

A hundred yards away, there was windsplitter!

And somebody on him and three other horses behind him.

Terl was just standing there watching the street.

The moment had come. It was not coordinated. But Jonnie knew he was having his last chance.

He snapped the metal tool out of his ankle cuff and slashed the leash.

It parted.

Like a streak of light Jonnie sprinted out of the door past Terl. Suddenly yanking talons caught in the buckskin.

It ripped.

Zigzagging like a hare, Jonnie headed for the nearest tree cover, momentarily expecting a pistol blast in the back.

He halted with his back braced against a broad aspen.

It was Chrissie!

And not only Chrissie, there was Pattie.

A sob surged up through Jonnie.

Chrissie's glad cry rang out. “Jonnie!”

Pattie yelled with delight. “Jonnie! Jonnie!”

And Windsplitter started to trot toward him.

“Go back!” screamed Jonnie. “Run! Oh my god, run!”

They halted, perplexed, their gladness turning into alarm. At a distance behind Jonnie they could see a thing. They started to turn the horses.