himself up a hard climb, and pausing to catch his breath,
looked back. He was not overly surprised to see figures moving leisurely
about the village examining the cabins, perhaps in search of the
inhabitants. Each of those searchers was clad in a form-fitting suit
that matched his own, and their bulbous hairless heads gleamed white in
the firelight. Ross was astonished to see that they passed straight
through walls of flame, apparently unconcerned and unsinged by the heat.

The human beings trapped in the town wailed and ran, or lay and beat
their heads and hands on the ground, supine before the invaders. Each
captive was dragged back to a knot of aliens near the main building.
Some were hurled out again into the dark, unharmed; a few others were
retained. A sorting of prisoners was plainly in progress. There was no
question that the ship people had followed through into this time, and
that they had their own arrangements for the Reds.

Ross had no desire to learn the particulars. He started climbing again,
finding the pass at last. Beyond, the ground fell away again, and Ross
went forward into the full darkness of the night with a vast surge of
thankfulness.

Finally, he stopped simply because he was too weary, too hungry, to keep
on his feet without stumbling, and a fall in the dark on these heights
could be costly. Ross discovered a small hollow behind a stunted tree
and crept into it as best he could, his heart laboring against his ribs,
a hot stab of pain cutting into his side with every breath he drew.

He awoke all at once with the snap of a fighting man who is alert to
ever present danger. A hand lay warm and hard over his mouth, and above
it his eyes met McNeil's. When he saw that Ross was awake McNeil
withdraw his hand. The morning sunlight was warm about them. Moving
clumsily because of his stiff, bruised body, Ross crawled out of the
hollow. He looked around, but McNeil stood there alone. "Ashe?" Ross
questioned him.

McNeil, showing a haggard face covered with several days' growth of
rusty-brown beard, nodded his head toward the slope. Fumbling inside his
kilt, he brought out something clenched in his fist and offered it to
Ross. The latter held out his palm and McNeil covered it with a handful
of coarse-ground grain. Just to look at the stuff made Ross long for a
drink, but he mouthed it and chewed, getting up to follow McNeil down
into the tree-grown lower slopes.

"It's not good." McNeil spoke jerk