The flesh in the furnace

he went down there he would never come upstairs again and he gave up that idea.
        He waited until night to leave Springsun, for he didn't want anyone to notice that it was only the assistant in the cab of the truck and that the puppet master himself was not in evidence. He did not know what anyone might make of that, but he was certain they would be suspicious. Too, he knew how badly he had handled the great air-cushion truck in the past. Pertos had called him a "demon" behind the wheel, and he had almost wrecked twice in the space of a single block. Perhaps he would wreck tonight, and then it would all be finished and he would be dead or they would catch him. But he couldn't allow that fear to keep him from leaving. If he stayed, there was a far greater terror: that of the rooms where they supposedly tortured young boys who were stupid-and that was one fear that he could not bear at all.
        He started the vehicle easy enough, and as the engine whuffed and the huge blades began beating, the other steps of the driver's procedure came back to him, bits and pieces of memories from all the hours he had watched Pertos at this task. He held the craft down until the blades beat steadily, then released the clutch. The truck rose two feet above the pavement, shuddering with power, waiting for the signal to progress.
        His mouth was very dry.
        He sent the truck forward too fast. In the last rushing seconds before impact with the pink wall of the opera house, he managed to bring the wheel tight around. The side of the truck brushed the opera house with its slipstream but didn't sustain any damage of direct contact. But before he could feel excitement over this initial triumph, there was a towering elm looming directly ahead of him, and he was forced to tear the wheel around the opposite direction, hard, his fingers slicked with sweat. The truck brushed the side of the tree. Metal protested noisily, but nothing tore loose. Autumn leaves sprinkled down across the windscreen, stuck to the glass so that he had to squint between them. He went on. He soon learned to hit the acceleration pedal with the utmost care, though he now and then forgot and came within inches of killing himself by ramming buildings and, occasionally, other vehicles.
        For a long while, he wandered the streets, searching for some way out of the city. He passed the signs for the superhighway many times but could not read them.
        On a backstreet where a park sided the road, he lost control and destroyed six saplings before stopping and cautiously working back toward the pavement.
        The city seemed mostly deserted. It was this lack of witnesses which kept him from being apprehended and detained by the police. His vehicle moved quietly, and after any small collision, he was soon gone, whispering down an alleyway in search of exit.
        In the morning, it would appear to some that a gremlin had been about wreaking havoc on those who had somehow engaged its anger.
        In time, he found a ramp and took it. The truck left the city for the wide, featureless plains of the little-used superhighways which he and Pertos had traveled so much in these last five years. The sight of that uniform gray without the sharp clutter of buildings on either side was almost a religious experience. He turned right, tramped the accelerator. The truck swept down the road, whined under the widely spaced arclights. Ten miles later, the city limits passed and there was no illumination but what the headlamps provided.
        He didn't get sleepy, for a change. He could not remem= ber another night when he had not been sleepy earlier in the evening. There was that ballooning excitement in him now, and it crowded out his exhaustion.
        The wind picked up eventually, and lightning snapped along the undersides of the clouds.
        "Tell me about… 'bout them," he said.
        He waited.
        Only the thunder answered.
        "About stars," he explained.
        He could only see two or three stars through the blanket of the storm clouds. They were lovely.
        "Stars?" he repeated.
        When he received no answer, he turned to look at Pertos. It all came back again, and he almost lost control of the truck.
        He didn't speak again. Or look to his right as he drove.
        Sometime toward morning, when the first light broke along the horizon and sent glassy, bright fingers higher into the sky, piercing the