m blind and
breathless, beat them to their bellies, to crawl. How long it took them,
they never knew.

But Gray caught glimpses of Dio the Martian crawling behind them, and
behind him again, the relentless flow of the fire-things.

They floundered out onto a rocky slope, fell away beneath the suck of
the wind, and lay still, gasping. It was hot. Thunder crashed abruptly,
and lightning flared between the cliffs.

Gray felt a contracting of the heart. There were no cables.

Then he saw it--the small, fast fighter flying below them on a flat
plateau. A cave mouth beside it had been closed with a plastic door. The
ship was the one that had followed them. He guessed at another one
behind the protecting door.

Raking the tumbled blond hair out of his eyes, Gray got up.

Jill was still sitting, her black curls bowed between her hands. There
wasn't much time, but Gray yielded to impulse. Pulling her head back by
the silken hair, he kissed her.

"If you ever get tired of virtue, sweetheart, look me up." But somehow
he wasn't grinning, and he ran down the slope.

He was almost to the open lock of the ship when things began to happen.
Dio staggered out of the wind-tunnel and sagged down beside Jill. Then,
abruptly, the big door opened.

Five men came out--one in pilot's costume, two in nondescript apparel,
one in expensive business clothes, and the fifth in dark prison garb.

Gray recognized the last two. Caron of Mars and the errant Ward.

They were evidently on the verge of leaving. But they looked cheerful.
Caron's sickly-sweet face all but oozed honey, and Ward was grinning his
rat's grin.

Thunder banged and rolled among the rocks. Lightning flared in the
cloudy murk. Gray saw the hull of a second ship beyond the door. Then
the newcomers had seen him, and the two on the slope.

Guns ripped out of holsters. Gray's heart began to pound slowly. He, and
Jill and Dio, were caught on that naked slope, with the flood of
electric death at their backs.

His Indianesque face hardened. Bullets whined round him as he turned
back up the slope, but he ran doubled over, putting all his hope in the
tricky, uncertain light.

Jill and the Martian crouched stiffly, not knowing where to turn. A
flare of lightning showed Gray the first of the firethings, flowing out
onto the ledge, hidden from the men below.

"Back into the cave!" he yelled. His urgent hand fairly lifted Dio. The
Martian glared at him, then obeyed. Bullets sna