I shrugged and trotted to keep up with him. "Okay. If you know of a
better place, we'll go there. But--"
"This damn headache," he said. "I've had it all day. All afternoon."
"My fault," I said. "I started you puzzling over a problem that concerns
only me...."
He wasn't listening.
There were few pedestrians on this level of traffic; most people who
walked places took the ambulators on the second level. Down here the
sidewalks were narrow and the curbs high, the streets being used almost
exclusively for heavy transfer and delivery trucks.
A high metal railing along the street-side of the walk prevented
careless pedestrians from stepping in the path of the huge, swift,
rumbling vehicles.
But there were no railings at the intersections.
And at the next intersection, Maxwell stepped off the curb, shifted his
course just a fraction, and went on at a tangent that would have had him
smack in the middle of a truck-traffic lane.
* * * * *
I grabbed his arm and pulled hard, to get him headed back in the right
direction.
"What the hell are you trying to do--get yourself killed?"
Which was almost exactly what I'd started to say. But he was the one who
said it.