nd then he sprang over the edge.

He had hoped the rockhound would go shooting past, but the animal
braked itself barely in time. Kreega went down the cliff face, clawing
into every tiny crevice, shuddering as the age-worn rock crumbled
under his fingers. The hawk swept close, hacking at him and screaming
for its master. He couldn't fight it, not with every finger and toe
needed to hang against shattering death, but--

He slid along the face of the precipice into a gray-green clump of
vines, and his nerves thrilled forth the appeal of the ancient
symbiosis. The hawk swooped again and he lay unmoving, rigid as if
dead, until it cried in shrill triumph and settled on his shoulder to
pluck out his eyes.

Then the vines stirred. They weren't strong, but their thorns sank
into the flesh and it couldn't pull loose. Kreega toiled on down into
the canyon while the vines pulled the hawk apart.

Riordan loomed hugely against the darkening sky. He fired, once,
twice, the bullets humming wickedly close, but as shadows swept up
from the depths the Martian was covered.

The man turned up his speech amplifier and his voice rolled and boomed
monstrously through the gathering night, thunder such as dry Mars had
not heard for millennia: "Score one for you! But it isn't enough! I'll
find you!"

The sun slipped below the horizon and night came down like a falling
curtain. Through the darkness Kreega heard the man laughing. The old
rocks trembled with his laughter.

* * * * *

Riordan was tired with the long chase and the niggling insufficiency
of his oxygen supply. He wanted a smoke and hot food, and neither was
to be had. Oh, well, he'd appreciate the luxuries of life all the more
when he got home--with the Martian's skin.

He grinned as he made camp. The little fellow was a worthwhile quarry,
that was for damn sure. He'd held out for two days now, in a little
ten-mile circle of ground, and he'd even killed the hawk. But Riordan
was close enough to him now so that the hound could follow his spoor,
for Mars had no watercourses to break a trail. So it didn't matter.

He lay watching the splendid night of stars. It would get cold before
long, unmercifully cold, but his sleeping bag was a good-enough
insulator to keep him warm with the help of solar energy stored during
the day by its Gergen cells. Mars was dark at night, its moons of
little help--Phobos a hurtling speck, Deimos merely a bright star.