THE DRILL WAS SILENT at last. So was the generator. Careful bat-patrols had shown no sign of Maggot-awareness. The bats had flown off to trail some more droppings and trigger another explosive . . . two valleys away.
The rats were off filling Molotov cocktail bottles with alcohol. On a "one-for-me, one-for-the-Maggots" basis, Chip suspected. The dexterous galago had gone to screw on lids—Melene and Doll were still keen to get him to screw on anything and anywhere. That left Chip alone with Virginia, who had appeared to have the same in mind earlier. But he needed the strength of another human for these jobs.
Chip and Virginia began maneuvering the little tank trailer out of the workshop. The task was difficult, since the new rack of bolted-on pieces of angle iron kept catching on the doorframe. In addition, the trailer was festooned with a tangle of barbed wire rolls, on top of knee-buckling loads of fertilizer bags, on top of diesel drums. Once empty fertilizer bags were now bulging full of wire snares, pipe bombs, homemade caltrops, and everything from aerosol cans to a gallon can of floor-tile glue. The remaining space was taken by bundles of hinged ceiling planks set up with tenpenny nails and bangstick cartridges. There were still bags of Molotovs to come.
And the insecticide bombs, which consisted of powder stuffed into the condoms which Virginia had found in the back of a desk drawer in the workshop. Someone had obviously believed in the colony policy of increasing the human capital—as soon as they'd got this reproductive act perfect, which, of course, required practice.
Virginia had asked him why anyone would need rubber balloons in a workshop. Chip had managed to choke out some kind of preposterous answer, which she had accepted without question. He was beginning to realize that, for all the girl's evident shy passion for him, she was an utter naif. The odd combination was giving him . . .
Fits.
He could feel his defenses crumbling. For all his detestation of Shareholders, Chip could no longer fool himself into thinking that the girl was simply toying with him out of idle-rich-girl ennui. Now, watching her wrestling energetically with the trailer, he felt his defenses crumble some more. Virginia's forehead was beaded with sweat. Trickles of it coursed through the dust and grime on her face. Her lips were pulled back in a grimace, exposing slightly-skewed front teeth. For all the world, she reminded him of—
Dermott. Except this girl was prettier—a lot prettier—and . . .
Sigh. Smarter, yeah. A lot smarter. And . . .
Virginia noticed him staring at her. Her grimace turned into a smile. Not a coy smile, or a coquettish one. Just—a smile.
Sigh. His eyes shied away from her and came to rest on one of the insecticide bombs. The sight of that bulging container triggered off a rapid free association in his mind.
He drove those thoughts away, fiercely, almost frantically. That road led to disaster!
Finally, they got the trailer outside. Next came filling the tank. They found a hose. Now all they had to do was start a raw brandy siphon. Oh, and calm the rats. They were going to get hysterical about Chip swiping their booze.
In the gray dawn light Chip caught sight of the distant flicker of returning batwings. He couldn't but feel relieved. Funny. In those far off days, about a week ago, bats, rats and humans shared a war and little else. Now . . . they were welded together by their struggle to stay alive. Even this Shareholder girl. She'd worked like a Vat. Chip had to admit she looked a bit like a Vat. The glasses and the skew teeth did it. A good Shareholder had those made-of-plastic-looking regular teeth and contacts or eye surgery at the specialist unit in the ship. "Toss me that rope."
She did.
"I've been meaning to ask—why do you have to wear glasses?"
"Because I can't see much without them," she said shortly. It was apparent he had trodden on a nerve.
He proceeded to make a bad thing worse. "What I meant was, what about surgery? They implanted infrared lenses into us soldiers. They do stuff with lasers . . ."
"My corneas are too thin. Back on Earth they could transplant. Here I'm stuck with it." Her tone said: Talk about something else. Don't ask me about contact lenses.
Tact was Chip's strong point, only if compared to his ability with seventeen-dimensional theoretical geometry. But this warning-off was clear enough to anyone, and it finally even got through to him. He kept his mouth shut. She must have realized that he was backing off. She initiated another subject, hastily. "What are you going to do after the war, Chip?"
He smiled. "First thing—get out of the goddamned army. If I live that long. Go back to work I suppose. Henri-Pierre would probably take me back. The SOB hates my guts, but then he wouldn't have to teach a new Vat from scratch."
"Did you like working there?" she asked, timidly.
"I couldn't stand it. But I was serving my apprenticeship. Apprentices do what they're told."
The grimness in his voice spoke volumes. But, after a moment, he relented. "I enjoyed cooking well enough. I just couldn't stand Henri-Pierre, or his ideas of food. Silly fancy overdressed stuff. Some of it was pure poison, honest. And such small portions."
He paused, uncertain whether to continue. But the friendly interest in her face sparked him onward, almost against his will. "What I always dreamed of doing was opening a steakhouse. A steakhouse and a pizza place. Where I could cook real food. Good robust stuff, chunky and tasty. Italian food, too. The only French thing I'd do is fries. And I'd like it to be just across the road from Chez Henri-Pierre. Just upwind of it, so people in there with their little bitty portions of pretty can appreciate the smell of ribs and french fries."
She began to laugh, a delicious sound, and it was a laugh which even twinkled her eyes. It would have turned stronger men than Chip to jelly.
Crumble, crumble. Disaster!
"Sorry," she choked, "I wasn't laughing at you, honestly. I was just remembering Daddy taking me to Henri-Pierre when I was a teenager—and being so hungry after lunch. His customers will go mad smelling that. That's beautiful!"
There was a flash of teeth in the predawn light. Chip used the reminder of coming mayhem to haul himself back from the precipice.
"Yeah," he said gruffly. "Enough talking! Let's get a move on."
Bronstein swung to hang under the eaves of the ruined outbuilding. "All right. What is it you want to speak to me about, Eamon?"
The big bat looked about the dawn uneasily, before hanging beside her.
"We have a chance to be free," said Eamon. "A chance to cast off the yoke of humanity forever. No more in slavery's chains to labor, and shed our lifeblood for tyrants."
"I've heard it all before," she snapped. "It would be a betrayal of trust."
"But the end justifies the means, Bronstein. We do this for bats, all bats. You can't make a revolution without breaking a few humans."
She was silent, her head turning. Then: "I can smell naphthalene. The Korozhet is somewhere about. We'll talk later."
Chip was doing his best to be persuasive. Calm, reasonable.
"Look, I don't want to be a wet blanket, but you're going to be a hindrance in combat. Distract us from keeping ourselves alive. You and the Crotchet would be safer here. You've some small chance of escape."
Virginia shook her head. "No chance at all. There is a statistically increasing probability of us being caught, each step we take away from this place." She seemed almost inhuman when she got onto math. . . .
She stood erect, her chin upraised, defiant, determined. "No, I am not staying. This is my war as much as it is yours." She smiled at him. "To die is far more sweet . . ."
"Bullshit, lady!" So much for his calm reason, thought Chip. "Pardon my language, but that's pure, pure bull. No kind of death is sweet. Death in war is just plain ugly, mostly."
"Surely you think dying nobly for a good cause is better than starving to death slowly?" she retorted, staring at him challengingly.
"Indade!" said Eamon.
"Hear, hear!" Siobhan clapped her wings.
"Anything is better than starving," added Fal, with feeling.
Chip tried a different tack. "What you and the Shareholder high command don't understand is it takes a lot of skill to kill a Maggot in a slowshield."
Virginia sniffed. "I must show you what I found when I ran for the fire extinguisher."
She walked into the workshop, her head held high, her fine-boned face set in a determination that shone in those glasses-magnified eyes. She emerged with a serious weapon. A chainsaw. It was a small one, perhaps intended for vine trimming. "I've seen these used. I don't believe I need much skill. And if I have to walk behind you all the way, I'm coming along. Accept it."
She was a mystery to him. Like lace on a suit of armor. The first bit might be froth and tears and romanticism, but there was a steel underneath it all that he could not match. Chip wasn't a fool. Short of tying her up he saw no way of stopping her. That wouldn't stop him trying. Still, the rats did their best . . .
"Methinks 'tis—Virgin Chainsaw-chick!" cheered Pistol, giving her a lewd one-eyed wink and a ratty-wolf whistle.
"What about giving our Chip a quick circumcision of the puissant pike?" sniggered Fal. "Just to prove to him you know how to use it, you lusty jade."
"But do it properly, my sweet little rouge. Don't take any short cuts!" Pistol laughed so much he fell off his perch on the trailer.
She bent over and put the chainsaw down. Pulled the cord. Miracle of miracles, it started. She picked it up and gunned it. Her heavy glasses shone through a cloud of blue two-stroke smoke, and her slightly skew teeth were revealed in a feral smile. "I'd rather use you as an example, rat. How would you like an instant sex change?"
Pistol scurried away.
"You're learning, Ginny," approved Melene.
"It'll roll." Chip kicked the tractor wheel. "The damn thing is heavy, sure, but I can move it on my own. The two of us should be able to push it easily."
"So? What's the problem then, Chip?"
Virginia studied him as he stared at the wheel. She was learning to read him. That realization both pleased and surprised her. The romances had never mentioned that necessity. . . .
Chip never approached a situation with a "how-shall-we-do-it" question. Instead he always stated the possible facts that pertained to the problem. Set out the building blocks for his solution . . .
He breathed in, sucking air across his teeth in a pensive hiss. "So just who is going to drive?"
That was a question! Ginny thought about it. "We could put Nym on the brake pedal?"
Chip shook his head. "In most respects, he's an exemplary rat. But entrusting Nym with mechanical devices is like giving a backsliding alcoholic a bottle of gin to look after. The mad rat would try to drive the thing."
There was a lot of truth in that, Virginia acknowledged to herself. She'd seen Nym perched on tip toes on the saddle of the tractor, clinging to the steering wheel, making odd brmm-brmm noises. When he'd realized she was looking at him he'd pretended to be clearing his throat. Nym seemed to assume that since he adored mechanical devices they returned the affection. Virginia started to snicker, until she realized that she had made much the same mistake with her romantic inclinations toward Chip.
"Doc, then? Or Melene? She's very sensible." Virginia felt herself blush remembering the very frank talk Melene had had with her. . . .
Chip pulled a face. "Doc would probably get distracted by the philosophical contentions of whether to push the brake pedal or not to push the brake pedal. Melene would be good, but she's by far the lightest rat. That's a stiff pedal, that. I think it'll have to be fat Fal."
"But Fal . . . he's so . . . so like Hindley," she shuddered.
"Who?"
"Oh, you wouldn't know," Virginia spoke as lightly as she could. "A character out of Wuthering Heights."
"I do, actually," came Chip's morose reply. "I had to read it at Company school. I guess you did, too. Shame. I didn't realize they did that sort of thing to Shareholders as well. I thought it was torture reserved for Vats."
"That book is part of me!" she started to protest. But she managed to choke off the words. It was part of her download, but she couldn't explain that to him. Chip had made clear enough his suspicions of "cyber-intelligence."
"Oh? I hated it, myself. That Cathy was such a total wet-lettuce. Five minutes of guts and there would have been no book." He didn't realize he was being Heathcliff to the life.
Fal stared distrustfully at the pedal. "This had better work, Connolly."
"Trust me, Fal. There's nothing to it." Chip almost crossed his fingers behind his back.
"Are you sure it's the right pedal?"
"Of course," said Virginia indignantly. "You think Chip wouldn't know something like that? Just be sure to stop the tractor when it gets to the hill."
Chip held his tongue. There were three pedals. He'd worked out clutch easily enough. The other two must be brake and accelerator. Must be.
The moon was up, the charges laid, the tank trailer full, the last supper eaten and the waiting hour . . . done.
Nym had stalked off in a huff.
"A-one, a-two . . ." The tractor began to roll. Glacially, and then more easily. More easily. More easily.
It was rolling down the hill, picking up speed. Picking up speed.
Fal was not a happy rat.
"Whoreson!" he shrieked. "Why isn't it stopping?" The rat had both feet thrust hard down on the pedal. The pedal was flush with the metal.
"Put the blade down!" shouted Chip, heels dragging as he now tried to hold the tractor back.
"HOW?" The rat frantically grabbed levers . . . Pressed pedals.
Crunch.
The wheel hit the rock that Nym had rolled in the way. The big rat had picked the biggest he could move. Even so it wasn't a very large rock . . . she was going over . . .
Over the rock . . . and the tractor stopped. Virginia hadn't tried to stop it by arm-strength. When the tire hit the rock she'd jumped up, and, not knowing what to push or pull, had grabbed the gear lever at the same time that Fal had jumped off.
A few gear teeth the poorer, the tractor halted.
" `Trust me,' he said. `There's nothing to it,' he said." Fal's fangs glittered wickedly in the moonlight as he stalked closer to Chip.
"Look, rat. This is the clutch. This, on the opposite side, where I put you, is the brake," snarled Chip. His own teeth were bared.
"Look yourself, you—you . . . tripe-visaged shogging rascal! I tried that one first. Then I tried the one next to it. Then I tried the grab or clutch . . ." He dug in his pack. Produced a clear-fluid filled half-pint bottle. "Here . . . Ginny. Do an old rat a favor. Open this screwcap for me."
"Fine bloody lush that can't even open his own bottle," Chip growled.
"Methinks you're walking on a thin edge, Connolly. I just wanted to give the lady a drink for saving my tail." Fal's lofty tone was betrayed by a slight shake of the paws that were holding out the bottle.
Chip snorted. "You're going up in Fal's estimation, Virginia. `Lady,' now. Weren't you a lusty jade earlier?"
She handed the rat his bottle, ignoring Chip studiously. And, with great ceremony, he passed it back to her. "No. You first. I insist. Have a good belt!"
She wished like hell he hadn't insisted. That hasty mouthful made her glasses mist up. Still, it was warming . . .
Maybe that was why she was so ready to urge Chip into that saddle. In the moonlight he was dark faced, his features stern and heavy browed . . . his eyes and gathered eyebrows were ireful now . . . the book words flowed unbidden into her mind. He wasn't Heathcliff. He was Edward Rochester. How could she have not realized it?
That made her . . . Jane Eyre. Well . . . well. Jane was courageous. Cathy was a wild headstrong child and a tearful emotional adult. He was Edward. . . .
She took another swallow. But in some ways he was more like Heathcliff. . . .
Again, the tractor was rolling down the hill, bats following in its erratic wake. In the stillness of the night she heard Chip swear. But there was still no ignition. She followed the pack down the hill.
There was a small rise on the downhill road, before it plunged steeply again. The tractor had paused just short of the top. Chip was off and examining it.
Well . . .
Off and kicking it.
"What's wrong?"
"In case you hadn't noticed, `lady,' " he snarled, "it hasn't started. And Fal was right. Neither of those two pedals work as a brake. Maybe they're not connected, or maybe they only work when the engine's running."
He walked around the little tractor, poking and prodding in the eternally hopeful fashion of the nonmechanical. Must be sumkinda magic . . .
"I'm sure these wheel things should be joined. Attached to this propeller thingy. At least I think so."
"A fan belt?" offered Virginia
He snapped his fingers. "That's it. A fan belt! I remember. We broke one when I did that trip to collect coalfish with Dieter. He was our mechanic. He took a pair of panty hose off Alette. Alette cried. She only had the one pair. Um. I don't suppose you have . . ."
"They're rather laddered," Virginia said.
She saw the flash of teeth. "I don't care if they have escalators. Gimme."
She blushed fiercely. "I, um, I'll go back up and get out of them."
"Just go around the other side of the tractor," Chip said impatiently. "We haven't got time."
She could swear she could feel herself bathed in infrared torchlight. Then there was a clatter up behind her, and something fell onto the roadway. She whirled, undergarments in hand, between anger and fright.
"What the hell do you stupid bastards think you're playing at?" Chip had scrambled halfway up the front cowling. He was wrestling a bottle from the grasp of a portly rat-form. Pistol was trying to help Fal pour liquor into the air filter.
"We're only giving it a drink, Chip," protested Pistol.
"Tis true. We just wished to give it something to live for." Fal's ratty voice was full to overflowing with generosity. He pointed at Virginia, who was trapped in Chip's instinctive follow of the headlight. "I mean, isn't that what you're doing?"
"Methinks it would have preferred a stripshow from another tractor," said Pistol, leering as only a one-eyed rat could leer.
"Will you dumb, oversexed, drunken bastards get the hell out of here!" snarled Chip.
"We were only trying to help," they protested, in a mutual chorus of insincere innocence and affront.
"Did you pour any of this muck into it?" demanded Chip, withholding the bottle.
"Barely a stoup for a miserly knave," insisted Fal virtuously, reaching for it.
Chip pondered the matter. The bottle really didn't seem to have much out of it, and he had other things to do besides fight with them. He gave it back. Forgetting that Virginia was there, Chip came hunting the top section of the air filter. Fortunately, she'd finished, and was able to give the metal plate to him, along with her pantyhose. In tight-lipped silence.
To find the wingnut which had fallen off the top of the air filter took the rats' senses of smell, however. For which arduous self-created labor they extorted another swallow from the bottle.
A few minutes later, the makeshift fan belt was in place. Now, they considered another small technical problem. With five yards of slight uphill, Virginia and the combined rat-weight couldn't budge the tractor with Chip on it. It was going to take both of the humans to push it again.
"Fal! Front and center!"
"Oh no. Never ever again, Chip! Thou whoreson knave! You can thrust me into base durance and contagious prison first. You can even take away my drink." The portly rat backed off with a surprising turn of speed.
"I'm sure they're just power-assisted brakes," insisted Chip. He sneaked closer to Fal, cooing: "It'll be fine when the engine is going; all we've got to do is put it in gear as soon as we're over the hill . . . and I'll jump up and do it."
"Shog off, Connolly!" Fal was now a good twenty feet away.
"I'll do it," offered Nym eagerly. "Machines like me."
Chip snorted. "Oh yeah. Do you think we're stupid, Nym?"
"No, honest," said the rat. He pointed a stubby foredigit. "All I'll do is stand on that clutch pedal, push the gear lever up, and then jump off the clutch pedal. Nothing to it. Simple mechanical device."
"That's what he said about the drill press," muttered Pistol darkly.
Chip tried for other volunteers. "Well, Pistol? Mel? Doll? Will you do it?"
"Not shogging likely," replied Doll and Pistol in unison.
"I'll go with Nym," said Melene warily. "And let's take Doc, too. We'll make sure he does the right thing, Chip."
Chip realized he wasn't going to get any better offers from the rats. And the bats were conspicuous by their silence. Mechanical devices—well, nonexplosive ones, anyway—were a closed book to them. Which they obviously intended to keep closed.
"A-one, a-two, a-threeee . . ."
It was a far steeper slope.
Their panting was drowned in a sudden roar. A flame, fully twenty feet high, leapt out of the air filter. In its sudden stark light Chip saw Melene and Doc clinging for dear life to the steering wheel. The still valley was filled with an over-revved tractor bellow.
"Told you what it needed was a stoup of good strong drink!" boasted Pistol.
"To be sure," said Bronstein drily. "And do you think there might possibly be a single Maggot, on the whole southern front, that doesn't know exactly where we are now?"
Chip was running after the tractor, shouting, oblivious to the danger of alerting the enemy. "Get after them, bats, and tell them to put the brakes on!"
He and Virginia started gaining on the tractor, which had left the road and was now careering wildly in a drunken madcap fashion. Jumping up onto the back stabilizer, Chip seized the wheel around the clutching paws of the manic Nym. He thrust his foot down on what he had decided was the brake pedal. Hard. Nothing happened.
He hauled at the mess of hydraulics levers. The blade came down with a clunk and started rectifying the shell damage to the terrain. The tractor still didn't stop. Virginia, panting, jumped up next to him. Belatedly, he thought of taking it out of gear.
They stood, stationary at last, in the middle of a war-torn field, the tractor still roaring away at full throttle. Chip vainly searched for a stuck accelerator pedal. Whatever that other pedal was, it didn't affect the throttle. Trust them to find a buggered tractor. Oh well. They'd just have to do their best.
Eamon fluttered out of the darkness. "Maggots!" he shrieked. "Maggots coming fast! Get up that hill and get the trailer."
Chip pulled wildly at the hydraulic levers again. The blade started to lift the front end of the tractor. Hastily he pushed the other way. The blade came up and the tractor began to roll downhill again. Desperately, Chip tried to thrust it into gear. Remembered the clutch. Tried again and let the clutch out . . .
With a jerk that nearly threw them all off, they began their blundering passage back up the hill.
"Faster!" yelled Nym, bouncing wildly on the tip of the saddle between Chip's legs, endangering Chip's family jewels. Still under the happy delusion he was driving the thing, the big rat was clutching the wheel with one paw, and belaboring the dashboard with a short stick.
"Faster!" shouted Eamon. "The Maggots are gaining!"
Chip ignored them all as he grimly hunched in white-knuckled fifteen-mile-an-hour concentration over the wheel. He proceeded up the once elegantly raked and graveled curve of the winery driveway. Doing his bit for aesthetics, he reduced the last three surviving plump-cherub statuette-befouled pillars to eye-pleasing plaster chips as he wove his way back up to the workshop. There he dropped the blade onto the cobbles in a screaming streak of sparks before getting the tractor out of gear.
He and Ginny leaped down from the still-roaring tractor and began manhandling the loaded trailer up to it. The rats scrambled to help—all except Nym, who stayed on the saddle, shaking the wheel.
They'd just got the linchpin in, when the bull-throated bellow of the over-revved diesel was muted. Reduced to a throaty chuckling thrub-thrub. Nym stood on the saddle looking as if he'd just burned his paw. "I just . . . um, pulled that lever."
"For God's sake, get off there," shouted Chip. "This time you found the throttle. Next time you'll probably blow the whole thing up."
"Not I!" protested Nym. Smugly: "Just as I said. Methinks I'm a natural with machines."
Chip's bellow showed he was sergeant-major material in one way at least. "GET down here! Give us a hand with this drive shaft. We've got to move!"
Ten seconds later, they'd figured out that it couldn't be done, short of losing fingers. "We'll just tie the trailer end of the drive shaft out of the way! We don't have time. There must be a way of stopping it turning—but I don't know how!" Chip's voice was sounding a tad desperate, even to him.
"I'll find out," said Nym serenely.
"No you won't!" snapped Eamon. "Tie it up and out of the way. We'll go and arm the mines."
Half a minute later it was done. And not half a minute too soon. A huge mass of Maggots was streaming up the hill from three sides, dark in the moonlight, except where the light flashed off snapping chelicerae.
"Okay, chilluns! All aboard the Maggotdom Midnight Express!" yelled Chip, caught up in the manic-ness of it all. "Grab your toys and let's go go GO!"
"Where is Fluff?" cried Virginia. "And where is the Professor?"
"Never fear! I am here!" The galago stood rampant in the moonlight on the trailer-top. Head back in a noble pose, he beat on his chest with tiny fists.
"Where the Professor, Fluff?"
Chip would have shouted "leave the stupid bastard," except he knew by now the others cherished stinky-prickles. The rats and bats fanned out, searching and calling. Chip followed his instincts to the cellar, with a piece of cargo netting. The Korozhet was lurking behind the farthest vat.
"You must flee, human. The enemy approaches," said the Korozhet.
"Come on," cooed Chip. "We have the tractor waiting."
"No, no. I will just delay you." The Korozhet retreated farther into the corner, rattling spines at him.
"It's all right. I've got a wonderful safe hideaway for you, Crotchet. We must look after you. Come." He quietly laid down the piece of netting. It was dim down here, and he'd noticed that the Crotchet wasn't very good at spotting obstacles in the dark. The Pricklepuss came wandering out of its dark corner. When it was half out and on top of the net Chip flipped the other side over it. Virginia, Siobhan and Melene came running in as he caught the corners.
"Chip," Virginia yelled, as she tripped down the stairs, "the bats have mined this place! It is going to blow sky-high in less than four minutes. We've got to find the Professor and get out of here."
"Grab a couple of corners," said Chip. "I've just arranged transportation for your Pricklepuss. Hey, Pricklepuss?"
The Korozhet seemed to be undergoing a sudden change of heart. "Indeed, Miss Virginia! Let us flee!"
The Crotchet was tied to the trailer like a bag of onions. Chip thought it an excellent place for him. And then the first Maggots came spilling into the yard. Bats dived into the attack as the tractor took the only open way out—back into the shed . . .
"Heads down!" shouted Chip, thrusting the tractor into second gear and pushing open the throttle. They took off with a wild jerk and sway, bouncing off most of the contents of the shed before crashing into the corrugated iron wall in the back. In a terrible, tearing din, the wall shrieked off its rivets and clattered aside.
They were out, free, and into the open. The tractor switchbacked down the hill through the barren fields as Chip kept frantically overcorrecting his overcorrections.
"That was a brilliant idea," shouted Virginia above the engine roar. "Going through the shed like that."
Chip didn't realize that it wasn't sarcasm. "Yeah. Sorry. Didn't realize how much space it took to turn the thing."
"I thought you knew how to drive one of these?" demanded Nym, from where he clung to the saddle.
"Um. In theory, yes. I've driven something similar."
"What?" demanded the rat.
They swerved erratically around a huge boulder.
"A delivery truck. Hold tight!"
They bumped and swayed wildly down the cut to the roadway. For an ugly moment the tractor's balance clung . . . narrowly. Then they were down on the road. "And how much driving did you do?" demanded Nym, terrier-like.
Chip's grin gleamed in the moonlight. "I reversed it up the garage ramp. Went over the edge. Cracked the sump. Dieter never let me drive it again. Hold tight again. I'm going to try another gear. There is a half a sea of Maggots coming down that hill after us!"
In a cloud of dust and bats, the tractor and its trailer bumped, surged and swayed erratically down the road.
The hilltop behind them erupted. Melene, perched on Virginia's shoulder, blew a raspberry at the Maggots. Fal, perched on a cushion of insecticide-filled condoms, blew a raspberry at the tractor.
Action; reaction. Fal's sharp claws punctured one of the containers. A cloud of insecticide enveloped him and the road behind.
"Why I—never use—the damn things!" he coughed. "Can't be trusted!"