Fifty feet below the road lay a broken, crushed piece of mechanism, its wheels still spinning, the odor of gasoline heavy about it from the broken tank, one light still gleaming, like a blazing eye, one light that centered upon the huddled, crumpled figure of a man who groaned once and strove vaguely, dizzily, to rise, only to sink at last into unconsciousness.

Barry Houston had lost his fight.
How long he remained there, Barry did not know.

He remembered only the falling, dizzy moment, the second or so of horrible, racking suspense, when, breathless, unable to move, he watched the twisting rebound of the machine from which he had been thrown and sought to evade it as it settled, metal crunching against metal, for the last time.

After that had come agonized hours in which he knew neither wakefulness nor the quiet of total unconsciousness.

Then-- Vaguely, as from far away, he heard a voice,--the sort of a voice that spelled softness and gentleness.