Hanging on

eyes. "You serious?"
        "Danny, you know I would never-"
        In the same instant, both men heard the change in the sound of the dozer's engine. It was no longer just idling. They turned as one and looked down the convent steps.
        Emil Hagendorf sat in the driver's chair, holding down on the brake pedal while he pumped the accelerator. The big machine rocked and groaned beneath him. He laughed, waved at Kelly and Dew.
        "Stop him!" Kelly shouted, leaping down the steps.
        Emil let up on the brakes.
        The bulldozer lurched forward. The steel track seemed to spin for a moment, kicking up dust and chunks of macadam.
        Major Kelly jumped from the fourth step and landed feet-first on the wide band of tread. He waved his arms, trying desperately to maintain his balance. The dozer was moving even as he reached it, and he was dragged forward like a man on a horizontal escalator belt.
        "Emil, stop!" he shouted.
        Hagendorf looked over at him and laughed.
        Kelly backpedaled, trying to keep from being tossed in front of the dozer and chewed into tiny pieces. His feet slipped on the knobbed tread as it flashed under his feet. He felt as if he were walking across a spinning sheet of ice in the center of a pitching sea.
        Pulling the wheel hard to the right, Hagendorf took the dozer off the bridge road. Under the engine noise, there was no longer the clatter of steel meeting a paved surface.
        Kelly did not look up to see where they were going. All of his attention was concentrated on the grinding, steel caterpillar belts. He stretched out, grabbed the roll-bar which rose behind Hagendorf, and pulled himself onto the dozer frame, away from the deadly tread.
        "Welcome aboard!" Hagendorf shouted.
        He was drunk.
        Holding onto the roll-bar, Kelly wedged himself into the same meager niche he had occupied while inspecting the village with Danny Dew a couple of days ago. He bent down and screamed in the chief surveyor's ear. "Stop this thing, damn you!"
        Hagendorf giggled. "Maybe that will stop us," he said, taking one hand from the vibrating steering wheel long enough to point to something ahead of them.
        Kelly followed the extended finger. "Hagendorf, no!"
        An instant later, the dozer plowed into the side of one of the single-story platform houses. The place came apart like a paper construction. The wood broke, splintered, gave way. They surged through the wall. The platform cracked and came apart under them, fodder for the ferocious tread. They drove the whole way across the room as the roof dipped slowly toward them, then crashed out through the opposite wall in a shower of pine planking, nails, and heavy beams.
        Hagendorf was laughing like hell. A splinter had caught him on the left cheek bad enough to let a steady stream of blood course down his face and drip off his chin. Otherwise, he appeared unscathed.
        Major Kelly did not know if he had been hurt himself, and he did not look to see. "Emil, you'll kill yourself!" he screamed.
        "You killed me already!" the surveyor yelled. "You and your chaos!"
        "You'll kill me!"
        "Jump."
        "Emil, we need this machine."
        "And I need a sense of order!"
        The dozer slammed straight into an outhouse. It started to climb the board wall, but then the building went down. Kelly was almost flung out of his niche. The dozer dropped squarely back onto its tread, rattling his teeth. With his left hand, he got a tighter grip on the roll-bar, squeezing it so hard that his knucklebones looked as if they would pop through his skin. The narrow outhouse crumpled into useless pieces as they drove over it.
        Hagendorf angled sharply toward the river.
        Toward the ravine.
        He pushed down on the accelerator.
        "No!" Kelly screamed.
        The major let go of the roll-bar and threw himself at the chief surveyor, tore Hagendorf's right hand from the steering wheel, punched and gouged the pudgy man until he had climbed atop him. Hagendorf was sitting on the driver's chair, facing front; and Kelly was sitting on Hagendorf, facing the other way, looking directly into the smaller man's bloodshot eyes. The major used his elbow to chop at Hagendorf s left arm until the surveyor finally let go of the wheel altogether.
        Unguided, the D-7 roared toward the ravine, straight for the steepest part of