point. But which one?

Sweat which he couldn't wipe off ran down the man's face and body. He
itched intolerably, and his lungs were raw from gasping at his dole of
air. But still he laughed in gusty delight. What a chase! What a
chase!

* * * * *

Kreega lay in the shadow of a tall rock and shuddered with weariness.
Beyond the shade, the sunlight danced in what to him was a blinding,
intolerable dazzle, hot and cruel and life-hungry, hard and bright as
the metal of the conquerors.

It had been a mistake to spend priceless hours when he might have been
resting working on that trap. It hadn't worked, and he might have
known that it wouldn't. And now he was hungry, and thirst was like a
wild beast in his mouth and throat, and still they followed him.

They weren't far behind now. All this day they had been dogging him;
he had never been more than half an hour ahead. No rest, no rest, a
devil's hunt through a tormented wilderness of stone and sand, and now
he could only wait for the battle with an iron burden of exhaustion
laid on him.

The wound in his side burned. It wasn't deep, but it had cost him
blood and pain and the few minutes of catnapping he might have
snatched.

For a moment, the warrior Kreega was gone and a lonely, frightened
infant sobbed in the desert silence. _Why can't they let me alone?_

A low, dusty-green bush rustled. A sandrunner piped in one of the
ravines. They were getting close.

Wearily, Kreega scrambled up on top of the rock and crouched low. He
had backtracked to it; they should by rights go past him toward his
tower.

He could see it from here, a low yellow ruin worn by the winds of
millennia. There had only been time to dart in, snatch a bow and a few
arrows and an axe. Pitiful weapons--the arrows could not penetrate
the Earthman's suit when there was only a Martian's thin grasp to draw
the bow, and even with a steel head the axe was a small and feeble
thing. But it was all he had, he and his few little allies of a desert
which fought only to keep its solitude.

Repatriated slaves had told him of the Earthlings' power. Their
roaring machines filled the silence of their own deserts, gouged the
quiet face of their own moon, shook the planets with a senseless fury
of meaningless energy. They were the conquerors, and it never occurred
to them that an ancient peace and stillness could be worth preserving.

Well--he fitted an arrow to the string and c