ush.
But they would be too many for him, and his feeble try would end
either in death or capture.

Neither alternative appealed to him. With Darbor, he had suddenly
found himself possessed of new tenacity toward life, and he had
desperate, painful desire to live for her.

He chose flight.

IV

The ship dropped short-lived rocket landing flares, circled and came
in for a fast landing on the cleared strip of brittle-crusted ash.

Some distance from the hastily-patched and now hastily abandoned mine
buildings, Tod Denver and Darbor paused and shot hasty, fearful
glances toward the landed ship. By Earthlight, they could distinguish
its lines, though not the color. It was a drab shadow now against the
vivid grayness of slopes. Figures tiny from distance emerged from it
and scattered across the flat and up into the clustered buildings. A
few stragglers went over to explore and investigate Denver's space
sled in the unlikely possibility that he and the girl had trusted to
its meager and dubious protection.

Besides the ship, the hunters would find evidence of recent occupation
in the living quarters, from which Denver had removed the frozen
corpse before permitting Darbor to assist with the crude remodeling
which he had undertaken. Afterward, when the mine buildings and
exposed shafts had been turned out on futile quest for the fugitives,
the search would spread. Tracks should be simple enough to follow,
once located. Denver had anticipated this potential clue to the
pursuit, and had kept their walking to the bare, rocky heights of the
spur as long as possible.

He hoped to be able to locate the old Martian working, but the chance
was slim. Calculating the shadow-apex of Mitre Peak at 2017 ET was
complicated by several unknown quantities. Which peak was Mitre Peak?
Was that shadow-apex Earth-shadow or Sun-shadow? And had he started
out in the correct direction to find the line of deep-cut arrow
markings at all?

The first intangible resolved itself. One mitre-shaped peak stood out
alone and definite above the sharply defined silhouettes of the
mountains. It must be Mitre Peak. It had to be.

The next question was the light source casting the shadow-apex. There
were two possible answers. It was possible to estimate the approximate
location of either sun or Earth at a given time, but calculations
involved in working out too many possibilities on different Earth-days
of the Lunar-day made the Earth's shadow-casting