e who tries it.
Understand?"

* * * * *

Mel Gray took one slow step forward, but Ward's sharp, "Stow it! A
guard," stopped him. The Martian worked back up the furrow. The guard,
reassured, strolled back up the valley, squinting at the jagged streak
of pale-grey sky that was going black as low clouds formed, only a few
hundred feet above the copper cables that ran from cliff to cliff high
over their heads.

"Another storm," growled Ward. "It gets worse as Mercury enters
perihelion. Lovely world, ain't it?"

"Why did you volunteer?" asked Gray, picking up his hoe.

Ward shrugged. "I had my reasons."

Gray voiced the question that had troubled him since his transfer.
"There were hundreds on the waiting list to replace the man who died.
Why did they send me, instead?"

"Some fool blunder," said Ward carelessly. And then, in the same casual
tone, "You mean it, about escaping?"

Gray stared at him. "What's it to you?"

Ward moved closer. "I can help you?"

A stab of mingled hope and wary suspicion transfixed Gray's heart.
Ward's dark face grinned briefly into his, with a flash of secretive
black eyes, and Gray was conscious of distrust.

"What do you mean, help me?"

Dio was working closer, watching them. The first growl of thunder
rattled against the cliff faces. It was dark now, the pink flames of the
Dark-side aurora visible beyond the valley mouth.

"I've got--connections," returned Ward cryptically. "Interested?"

Gray hesitated. There was too much he couldn't understand. Moreover, he
was a lone wolf. Had been since the Second Interplanetary War wrenched
him from the quiet backwater of his country home an eternity of eight
years before and hammered him into hardness--a cynic who trusted nobody
and nothing but Mel 'Duke' Gray.

"If you have connections," he said slowly, "why don't you use 'em
yourself?"

"I got my reasons." Again that secretive grin. "But it's no hide off
you, is it? All you want is to get away."

That was true. It would do no harm to hear what Ward had to say.

Lightning burst overhead, streaking down to be caught and grounded by
the copper cables. The livid flare showed Dio's face, hard with worry
and determination. Gray nodded.

"Tonight, then," whispered Ward. "In the barracks."

* * * * *

Out from the cleft where Mel Gray worked, across the flat plain of rock
stripped naked by the wind that raved across it, la