G-suit strangling his movements and the evaporating fuel cold as ice in
his air and down his face.
Within the battered hull of the Mirage a puddle of Avtur had been heated
by the white-hot shell of the jet compressor. its low volatility at
last was raised to flash point and a dying spark from the electronic
equipment was enough to ignite it.
With a dull but awful roar, the Mirage bloomed with dark crimson flame
and sooty black smoke, the wind ripped the flames outwards in great
streamers and pennants that engulfed all around them, and David
staggered onwards in the midsts of the roaring furnace that seemed to
consume the very air.
He held his breath, if he had not, the flame would have scorched his
lungs. He closed his eyes tightly against the agony and ran on blindly.
His body and his limbs were protected by the fireproof pressure suit and
boots and gloves, but his head was bare and soaked with jet fuel.
As he ran his head burned like a torch. His hair frizzled off, in a
stinking puff of flame and the skin of his scalp and neck and face were
exposed. The flames burnt his ears off and most of his nose, they
flayed off his skin in a blistering sheet and then they ate into the raw
flesh, they burnt away his lips and exposed his teeth and part of the
bone of his jaw. They ate through his eyelids and stripped the living
meat from his cheeks.
David ran on through the burning air and smoke, and he did not believe
that such pain was possible. It exceeded all his imaginings and swamped
all the senses of his body and mind, but he knew he must not scream.
The pain was a blackness and the vivid colours of flame in his tightly
closed eyes, it was a roaring in his ears like all the winds of the
world, and in his flesh it was the goads and whips and burning hooks of
hell itself.
But he knew he could not let this terrible fire enter his body and he
ran on without screaming.
The women from the orchard were brought up short by the sudden forest of
flame and black smoke that rose up in front of them, engulfing the
squashed-insect body of the aircraft, and closing around the running
figure of the pilot.
It was a solid impenetrable wall of heat and smoke that blotted out all
ahead of them, and forced them to draw back, awed and horrified, before
its raging hot breath. They stood in a small group, panting and
wild-eyed.
Then abruptly a freak gust of wind opened the heavy oily curtains of
smoke, and out of them stumbled a dreadful thing with a scorched and
smoking body and a head of flame.
Blindly it came out of the smoke, one arm hanging and its feet dragging
and staggering in the soft earth.
They stared at this thing in horror, frozen in silence, and it came
towards them.
Then a strapping girl, with a strong brown body and a man of dark hair,
uttered a cry of compassion, and raced to meet him.
As she ran, she stripped off her heavy voluminous skirt of thick wool,
