Seth beat it down the valley as fast as he could, knowing that he was going to have to squeeze every ounce of power he could out of his old black steam giant it he was going to stand a chance of outrunning the Radleps on his tail. He had a fair head start but he knew that the bikes the 'leps rode were perfectly capable of eating away the distance between him and them in no time flat. He was in bullet range now, and he half expected to hear shots. A single clean M16 round into his cargo tanks and he would be dead before the flames burned his hair down to his scalp.

Power. He needed more power. He kicked open the heavy iron door of the boiler furnace and turned with his usual strength and economy of movement to the filling of the inferno with coal. A dozen strokes with the shovel pumped a half ton of the black rocks onto the fire, and he felt his locomotive seize the added fuel and strain to race a little bit faster. The stack belched black smoke and the great iron pistons pounded with the effort to reach the power that Seth demanded.

His machine pistol was slung over the brake handle and he grabbed it, cradling it against his stomach. He chanced a quick look off to the side of the foot plate and saw Radleps—a lot, thirty or so—crouched low over their handlebars, sweeping up along side. These men weren't dumb like the Stormers he had encountered earlier in his trip; they didn't back up behind the roaring tonnage of the rail-home behemoth; instead they rode close to the tank cars, guessing that Seth wouldn't risk trying to cut them down with a spray of automatic fire for fear that just one of his bullets would go wide and slam into the brimming fuel tanks.

As he leaned out to take a look, a single shot from a handgun whistled past his ear. The 'leps figured that as long as they were shooting forward of the tanks, they didn't have to worry too much about stray bullets. In other words, Seth was a target, but they weren't.

By now it had become plain to him that they  wanted the train whole and intact. If they only wanted him dead, they would have fallen back to a safe distance and sent their big shells racing forward to blow him out of the cold morning. They wanted the gas. When they had it, they would kill him.

Seth hunched on the foot plate, wondering what he could do to save himself, when up behind his shoulder he saw a single Radlep standing on the coal heaped just behind the engine in the tender. Obviously, he had abandoned his bike somewhere behind and had climbed over the gas tanks, his Ml 6 held ready to bring Seth down. Brave man, thought Seth as his quick M3A sent a stem message of death to the 'lep's tall thin body. His leather jacket shredded under the hot hailstorm of bullets. He fell onto the coal pile, red blood pulsing out onto the black shiny rocks.

Seth ignored him as he bent to throw some more coal on his engine fire.

Under cover of the noise of the shovel and the thunderous pumping of the pistons, a 'lep pulled himself up next to the foot plate. He held his bike steady for a moment then swung himself off the screaming machine, jumping for the grab bar running next to the steep steel steps that ran up the side. of the locomotive. The riderless bike stood erect for a moment then fell over, its engine racing.

The Radlep scrambled onto the train and lunged at Seth, grabbing him around the waist. Seth's nostrils filled with the dirty rotting stench that some of the 'leps gave off as their bodies slowly turned to a mass of putrefaction. Seth grappled with the man, feeling the curious slide and shift of the man's body under his clothes as great plates of skin tore and sliced. It was as if the man was coming apart at the seams and made him feel like he was bathed in oil.

But the 'lep fought like a man in the peak of health. His strong fingers closed around Seth's throat, and they flexed, the force of his squeeze causing a dozen scabs on his joints to break. Clear liquid mixed with an oily pus flowed out of the newly opened wounds, and Seth felt the viscous fluid drain onto his face and neck, trickling down underneath his shirt. He shivered in revulsion. The horror of the Radlep and his hideous wounds brought forth a surge of strength in Seth. He shot a knee up quickly into the 'lep's groin, doubling him over in pain.

Seth picked up his shovel and swung, catching the Radlep on the side of the head. Instantly the oily flesh swelled and closed an eye. The scarred warrior immediately grabbed for the big Llama Automatic that he wore at his side. But before he could pull it from his belt Seth swung again, and the 'lep felt the sharp reverberation of the steel shovel as it met the hard bones on his face, His head was a mass of blood. He fell. Another Radlep was knocking on the door. He was climbing up the iron steps, pulling himself aboard with one hand and wielding a long deadly-looking machete in the other.

Seth lunged with the shovel, rapping the man on the knuckles, then aiming a kick straight into the center of the 'lep's chest. The force of the blow stunned him and he toppled back toward the open side of the train and the rushing landscape beyond. Just in time, before falling, he grabbed for the metal rail, dropping the knife as he did so. Seth reared back and beat the 'lep's hands with the shovel, swinging again and again like a lumberjack at the base of a tall tree.

The 'lep's cracked lips opened wide and he screamed in agony. Again the shovel landed on his tortured hands, and Seth could imagine the the man's hands turning into bloody stumps of bone and skin inside the stout leather gloves that he wore. Seth grabbed all the strength he could find in his body and slammed a final blow against the man's meaty hand: it seemed to squash the flesh flat against the iron of the locomotive's side. With a pain-wracked wail the Radlep, unable to stand the fierce torment, unable to absorb one more blow, let go. Seth didn't watch him fall. He turned and scooped up the body of the bloody Radlep who still cluttered the foot plate, and tossed him off the rushing train to join his brother warrior. The body of the 'lep bounced on the rocky ground when he hit.

The remaining 'leps had fallen behind a bit, as if they wanted time to contemplate their next move. Seth slammed the throttle full open and immediately managed to add to the little bit of daylight between him and his pursuers. He had to act soon. Not too far ahead the track left the gentle grade of the valley floor and began its long slow ascent up the steep side of the valley. The iron horse would have to slow down to almost a walking pace if it was going to haul its heavy load up that incline—if he cut speed that much, the 'leps would be all over him.

He had about three miles in which to make his move. A tunnel was looming up ahead, its great black mouth yawning wide to swallow him and his short train up. A plan formed like a pearl within his mind. He climbed out onto the side of the fuel tank that rode just behind the engine. As he went he prayed that the 'leps hadn't taken up positions on ' both sides of the train. He was so exposed that he knew that if a 'lep marksman saw him, he would take a chance on a single shot to whip Seth off his precarious foothold on the side of the tank car. But he was safe. The 'leps were bunched together on the far side of the train.

Seth crawled to the joint between the first and the second tank cars. He paused for a moment, trying not to look at the ground that blurred by him. He gathered his strength and then hurled himself across the wide opening between the two cars, landing neatly on the opposite narrow deck of the second car. From there he inched his way down the length of the tank and finally reached his objective.

He swung himself in between the two cars and turned the brake wheel that would slow down the third car. Then he pulled the lynching pin from its place on the side of the tank car. With this long piece of metal hooked at one end he reached down, as if fishing, and unhooked the heavy metal coupling that bound the second car to the third. He swatted at the rubber hose of the brake coupling and severed the old rubber with a single blow. The last car had been cut free now and was still moving rapidly, carried along by the stored speed of the whole train and the weight of the fuel in the tank.

Seth was running out of time now. He couldn't afford the time to take the safe way back, inching along the far side of the cars to the relative safety of the control center of the locomotive. He had to run for it, taking the quickest route: back across the top of the tanks. He took a deep breath, like a swimmer before a dive into icy-cold water, then he hauled himself up to the top of the car. He ran across the slippery tanks as fast as he could. His heavy boots rang on the metal. The 'leps saw him but no one chanced a shot.

Seth dived off the top and fell into the coal pile just behind the foot plate. He lay there a second, his chest heaving, gulping in air. The tunnel was up ahead. Behind him the 'leps were looking curiously at the lone tank car that was rolling along, now quite far behind the train, looking like. an ungainly calf chasing after its mother.

Black enveloped him as the train swept into the tunnel. The pulsing noise of the engine was doubled in intensity as it bounced and ricocheted off the walls. Seth stared behind him as the drifting tank car entered the tunnel with the Radleps just behind it. They slowed down to squeeze by the car as it took up most of the width of the tunnel. When Seth judged that most of the 'leps were caught in the narrow alley between the tank's steel sides and the unforgiving brick of the tunnel, he let rip with a half-dozen slugs, each one slicing into the lake of gasoline.

The noise of the explosion was deafening, and flames raced out in all directions. The air was thick with fire, smoke, and pieces of tank and Radleps. Seth had thrown himself flat on the foot plate, half expecting some fiery piece of shrapnel to tear through the air and pierce the delicate skin of the remaining tanks.

The train rushed out into the light. Behind Seth the mouth of the tunnel swirled with smoke, and it looked like the barrel of a giant shotgun that had just fired a mammoth charge. Of the Radleps there was no sign. Their torn bodies were strewn around the track at the entrance to the tunnel, now just sticky piles of flesh all burning brightly.

Seth lit a cigar and tugged the throttle down for the long hard slow climb out of the valley.

Seth exhaled and smiled to himself, thinking of what Beck would say when he showed up in Chicago with two tanks instead of three. No, Beck was not going to be pleased at all.

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