outside, one of the small hand-weapons in his hand, and fired several
shots. They all missed, but Hradzka heard the whining sound of the
missiles passing uncomfortably close to him.

It was imperative that he recover the blaster he had hidden in the
hollow tree at the head of the valley. By this time, there would be a
concerted search under way for him, and he needed a better weapon than
the solid-missile projector he had taken from the policeman. He did not
know how many shots the thing contained, but if it propelled solid
missiles by chemical explosion, there could not have been more than five
or six such charges in the cylindrical part of the weapon which he had
assumed to be the charge-holder. On the other hand, his blaster, a
weapon of much greater power, contained enough energy for five hundred
blasts, and with it were eight extra energy-capsules, giving him a total
of four thousand five hundred blasts.

Handling the two-wheeled vehicle was no particular problem; although he
had never ridden on anything of the sort before, it was child's play
compared to controlling a Hundredth Century strato-rocket, and Hradzka
was a skilled rocket-pilot.

Several times he passed vehicles on the road--the passenger vehicles
with enclosed cabins, and cargo-vehicles piled high with farm produce.
Once he encountered a large number of children, gathered in front of a
big red building with a flagstaff in front, from which a queer flag,
with horizontal red and white stripes and a white-spotted blue device in
the corner, flew. They scattered off the road in terror at his approach;
fortunately, he hit none of them, for at the speed at which he was
traveling, such a collision would have wrecked his light vehicle.