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What about those lights there? Once you started walking you'd have to gauge how fast those beetles could make it down here Well, how far was it to the other curb? It seeure for that anyway, figure that with hiht take as much as thirty seconds, forty seconds to walk all that way The beetles? Once started, they could leave three blocks behind them in about fifteen seconds So, even if halfway across he started to run?

He put his right foot out and then his left foot and then his right He walked on the empty avenue

Even if the street were entirely e, for a car could appear suddenly over the rise four blocks further on and be on and past you before you had taken a dozen breaths

He decided not to count his steps He looked neither to left nor right The light fro as the midday sun and just as hot

He listened to the sound of the car picking up speed two blocks away on his right Its ht at Montag

Keep going

Montag faltered, got a grip on the books, and forced hi steps then talked out loud to hiain He was now half across the street, but the roar froher as it put on speed

The police, of course They see me But slo, quiet, don't turn, don't look, don't seem concerned Walk, that's it, walk, walk

The beetle was rushing The beetle was roaring The beetle raised its speed The beetle hining The beetle was in high thunder The beetle ca trajectory, fired from an invisible rifle It was up to 120clahts burnt his cheeks, it seemed, and jittered his eyelids and flushed the sour sweat out all over his body

He began to shuffle idiotically and talk to his as far as they would go and down and then far out again and down and back and out and down and back God! God! He dropped a book, broke pace, almost turned, chan

ged hisin concrete e food, two hundred, one hundred feet away, ninety, eighty, seventy, Montag gasping, flailing his hands, legs up down out, up down out, closer, closer, hooting, calling, his eyes burnt white now as his head jerked about to confront the flashing glare, now the beetle ed in its own light, noas nothing but a torch hurtling upon him; all sound, all blare Now--almost on top of him!

He stumbled and fell

I'm done! It's over

But the fallinghi lay flat, his head down Wisps of laughter trailed back to him with the blue exhaust from the beetle

His right hand was extended above hier, he sa as he lifted that hand, a faint sixteenth of an inch of black tread where the tire had touched in passing He looked at that black line with disbelief, getting to his feet