Is That What People Do? by Robert Sheckley Read Free Book Online

make out the dramatic black cliffs that rimmed the plain.
    “I got about fifteen miles to go before I pile into the cliffs. Not much time, at the speed I’m traveling.” He locked his brakes. The tires began to scream and the brake linings smoked furiously. But the wind, at 183 miles an hour, didn’t even notice the difference. His speed over the ground had picked up to 44 miles an hour.
    “Try sailing her out!” Nerishev said.
    “She won’t take it.”
    “Try, man! What else can you do? The wind’s hit 185 here. The whole station’s shaking! Boulders are tearing up the whole post defense. I’m afraid some boulders are going to get through and flatten—”
    “Stow it,” Clayton said. “I got troubles of my own.”
    “I don’t know if the station will stand! Clayton, listen to me. Try the—”
    The radio suddenly and dismayingly went dead.
    Clayton banged it a few times, then gave up. His speed over the ground reached 49 miles an hour. The cliffs were already looming large before him.
    “So all right,” Clayton said. “Here we go.” He released his last anchor, a small emergency job. At its full length of 250 feet of steel cable, it slowed him to 30 miles an hour. The anchor was breaking and ripping through the ground like a jet-propelled plow.
    Clayton then turned on the sail mechanism. This had been installed by the Earth engineers upon much the same theory that has small oceangoing motor boats carry a small mast and auxiliary sail. The sails are insurance, in case the engine fails. On Carella, a man could never walk home from a stranded vehicle. He had to come in under power.
    The mast, a short, powerful steel pillar, extruded itself through a gasketed hole in the roof. Magnetic shrouds and stays snapped into place, supporting it. From the mast fluttered a sail made of link-woven metal. For a mainsheet, Clayton had a three-part flexible-steel cable, working through a winch.
    The sail was only a few square feet in area. It could drive a twelve-ton monster with its brakes locked and an anchor out on 250 feet of line—
    Easily—with the wind blowing 185 miles an hour.
    Clayton winched in the mainsheet and turned, taking the wind on the quarter. But a quartering course wasn’t good enough. He winched the sail in still more and turned further into the wind.
    With the super-hurricane on his beam, the ponderous truck heeled over, lifting one entire side into the air. Quickly Clayton released a few feet of mainsheet. The metal-link sail screamed and chattered as the wind whipped it.
    Driving now with just the sail’s leading edge, Clayton was able to keep the truck on its feet and make good a course to windward.
    Through the rear-vision mirror, he could see the black, jagged cliffs behind him. They were his lee shore, his coast of wrecks. But he was sailing out of the trap. Foot by foot, he was pulling away.
    “That’s my baby!” Clayton shouted to the battling Brute.
    His sense of victory snapped almost at once, for he heard an earsplitting clang and something whizzed past his head. At 187 miles an hour, pebbles were piercing his armor plating. He was undergoing the Carellan equivalent of a machine-gun barrage. The wind shrieked through the holes, trying to batter him out of his seat
    Desperately he clung to the steering wheel. He could hear the sail wrenching. It was made out of the toughest flexible alloys available, but it wasn’t going to hold up for long. The short, thick mast, supported by six heavy cables, was whipping like a fishing rod.
    His brake linings were worn out, and his speed over the ground came up to 57 miles an hour.
    He was too tired to think. He steered, his hands locked to the wheel, his slitted eyes glaring ahead into the storm.
    The sail ripped with a scream. The tatters flogged for a moment, then brought the mast down. Wind gusts were approaching 190 miles an hour.
    The wind now was driving him back toward the cliffs. At 192 miles an hour of wind, the Brute was lifted bodily,