Mellie, Sira’s personal maid, was too disturbed by her mistress’s kidnaping to seek other employment. She saw the teletabloid forecasts of the wedding, made life-like by clever technical faking, but rumors of the princess’ escape were circulating freely despite a rigid censorship. She imagined that lovely body down in the muck of the canal, crawled over by slimy things, and she was sick with horror.

Mellie lived with her brother, Wasil Hopspur, and her aged mother. Wasil was an accomplished technician in the service of the Interplanetary Radio and Television Co., and his income was ample to provide a better than average home on the desert margin of South Tarog. Here Mellie sat in the glass-roofed garden, staring moodily at the luxuriant vegetation.

She looked abstractedly at the young man coming down the garden walk, annoyed by the disturbance. There was something familiar in the sway of his hips as he walked.

And then she flew up the path. Her arms went around the visitor, and Mellie, the maid, and Princess Sira kissed.

Mellie was immediately confused. A terrible breach of etiquette, this. But Sira laughed.

“Never mind, Mellie. It is good for me, a fugitive, to find a home. Will you keep me here?”

“Will I?” Mellie poured into these words all her adoration.

“Mellie, the time has come for action. Not for the monarchy. I am sick of my claims. I would give it all You remember the young officer of the I. F. P.? The one who kissed me?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that comes later. First I must consider the war conspiracy. Have you heard of it?”

“There are rumors.”

“They are true. Will Wasil help me?”

“He has worshiped you, my princess, ever since the time I let him help me serve you at the games.”

“One more question.” Sira’s eyes were soft and misty. “My dear Mellie, you realize that I may be trailed here? What may happen to you?”

“Yes, my princess. And I don’t care!”

As Murray parted from his brother-in-arms, Sime Hemingway, on the roof of the cylindrical fortress in the Gray Mountains, he felt the latter’s look of bitter contempt keenly. He longed bitterly to give Sime some hint, some assurance, but dared not, for Scar Balta’s cynical smile somehow suggested that he could look through men and read what was in their hearts. So Murray played out his renegade part to the last detail, even forcing his thoughts into the rôle that he had assumed in order that some unregarded detail should not give him away. He convinced the other I. F. P. man, anyway.

But Murray had an uneasy feeling that Balta was laughing at him, and when the shifty soldier politician invited him into his ship for the ride back to Tarog, Murray had a compelling intuition that he would not be in a position to step out of the ship when it landed on the parkway of Scar Balta’s hotel.

Having infinite trust in his intuitions, Murray thereupon made certain plans of his own.

He noted that the ship, which was far more luxurious than one would expect a mere army colonel to own, had a trap-door in the floor of the main salon. Murray pondered over the purpose of this trap. He could not assign any practical use for it, in the ordinary use of the ship.

But he could not escape the conviction that it would be a splendid way to get rid of an undesirable passenger. Dropped through that trap-door a man’s body would have an uninterrupted fall until it smashed on the rocks below.

Murray then examined the neuro-pistol that had been given him. It looked all right. But when he broke the seal and unscrewed the little glass tube in the butt, he discovered that it was empty. The gray, synthetic radio-active material from which it drew its power had been removed.

Murray grinned at this discovery, without mirth. It was conclusive.

At the first opportunity he jostled one of the soldiers, knocking his neuro-pistol to the floor his own, too. And when he apologetically stooped and retrieved them the mollified soldier had the one with the empty magazine.

So far, so good. Murray noted that the wall receptacles were all provided with parachutes. It would be simple to take one of these, make a long count, and be on the ground before he was missed. Provided that he could leave unobserved.

The ship was now well in the air, and beginning to move away from the fort. But they were only ten miles away, and Murray had hardly expected that Balta would be in such a hurry.

“You get off here!” Balta said, and Murray felt the muzzle of the neuro-pistol on his spinal column.

A grinning soldier seized a countersunk ring and raised the trap-door.

“So you’re going to murder me,” Murray said, speaking calmly.

“I take no chances,” was Balta’s short answer. “Step!”

Murray stepped, swaying like a man in deadly fear. He lowered his feet through the hole. Looking down, he saw that they were about to pass over a bitter salt lake, occasionally found in the Martian desert. He looked up into the muzzle of the menacing neuro-pistol.

“Balta, you’re a dog!” he stated coldly.

“A live dog, anyway,” the other remarked with a twisted grin. “You know the saying about dead lions.”

Murray’s fingers clenched on the edge of the rug. It was thin and strong, woven of fine metal threads. They were just over the edge of the salt lake.

Murray dropped through, but retained his death-like grip on the rug. It followed jerkily, as the men above tripped, fell, and rolled desperately clear.

Murray’s heart nearly stopped as he fell the first thousand feet. The rug, sheer as the finest silk, failed to catch the wind. It ran out like a thin rivulet of metal, following Murray in his unchecked drop.

But he had a number of seconds more to fall, and he occupied the time left to him. He fumbled for corners, found two, lost precious time looking for the others. He had three corners wrapped around one hand when the wind finally caught the sheer fabric, bellied it out with a sharp crack. The sudden deceleration nearly jerked his arm out.

Even so, he was still falling at a fearful rate. The free corner was trailing and snapping spitefully, and the greasy white waters of the lake were rushing up!

At any rate, the rug held him upright, so that he did not strike the water flat. His toes clove the water like an arrow, and the rug was torn from his grasp. The water crashed together over his head with stunning force. After that it seemed to Murray that he didn’t care. It didn’t matter that his eyes stung that his throat was filled with bitter alkali. All of his sensations merged in an all-pervading, comfortable warmth. There was a feeling of flowing blackness, of time standing still.

Murray’s return to consciousness was far less pleasant. His entire body was a crying pain: every internal organ that he knew of harbored an ache of its own. He groaned, and by that token knew that he was breathing.

As unwillingly he struggled back to consciousness he realized that he was inside a rock cave, lying on a thin, folded fabric that might well be the rug that had served as an emergency parachute. He could see the irregular arch of the cave opening, could catch hints of rough stone on the interior.

He sat up with an effort. There was a vile taste in his mouth, and he looked around for something to drink. There was a desert water bottle standing on the floor beside him. That meant he had been found and rescued by some Martian desert rat who had probably witnessed his fall. He rinsed out his mouth with clean, sweet spring water from the bottle, drank freely. His stomach promptly took advantage of the opportunity to clear itself of the alkali, and Murray, controlling his desire to vomit, crawled outside into the blinding light of the Martian afternoon. He saw that the cave was high up on the side of one of the more prominent cliffs. There were many such hollowed places, indicating that the sloping shelf on which he now lay had once been the beach of a vast sea which at some time must have covered all but the higher peaks of the Gray Mountains. It was, of course, the sea that had deposited the scanty soil which here and there covered the rocks. During geologic ages it shrunk until it all but disappeared, leaving only a few small and bitter lakes in unexpected pockets.

There was a succession of prehistoric beaches below Murray’s vantage point, marking each temporary sea level, giving the mountain a terraced appearance. A thousand feet below was the white lake, sluggish and dead.

Murray was looking for the man who had saved him. He was able to discern him, after a little effort, toiling up the steep slopes. He was still nearly all the way down. He could see only that he seemed to be dressed in white desert trousers and blouse, and that he wore a broad-brimmed sun helmet. He was carrying something in a bag over his shoulder. He was making the difficult ascent with practiced ease, his body thrown well forward, making fast time for such an apparently deliberate gait.

The desert glare hurt Murray’s eyes. He closed them and fell asleep. He awoke to the shaking of his shoulder, looked up into a black-bearded face, a beard as fierce and luxuriant as his own. But where Murray was bald, this man’s hair was as thick and black as his beard. He had thrown off his helmet, so that his massive head was outlined against the sky. His torso was thick, his shoulders broad. Large, intelligent eyes and brilliant coral skin proclaimed the man to be a native of Mars.

The man’s white teeth flashed brilliantly when he spoke.

“Feeling better? Man, you can feel good to be here at all! Time and again have I seen Scar Balta drop ’em into that lake, but you’re the first one ever to break the surface again. He gave you a break, though. First time he ever gave anybody as much as a pocket handkerchief to ease his fall. That lake is useful to Scar. It keeps the bodies he gives it, and none ever turn up for evidence.”

Murray was still struggling with nausea. “Want to thank you,” he managed. “I got it bad enough. Ow! I feel sick!”

The Martian bestirred himself. He scraped up the ancient shingle, making a little pillow of sand for Murray’s head. The Sun was already nearing the western horizon, and its heat was no longer excessive. Murray watched through half-closed lids as the big man descended a short distance, returning with an armful of short, greasy shrubs. He broke the shrub into bits, made a neat stack; stacked a larger ring of fuel around this, until he had a flat conical pile about eight inches high and two feet in diameter.

From a pocket safe he procured a tiny fire pellet. This he moistened with saliva and quickly dropped into the center of his fuel stack. The pellet began to glow fiercely, throwing off an intense heat. In a few seconds the fuel caught, burning briskly and without smoke.

“Wouldn’t dare do this in the open,” the Martian explained, “if this stuff gave off any smoke at all. The pulpwood mounds down in the flats make a nice fire, but they smoke and leave black ashes, easy to see from the sky. Now you just rest easy. You’ll feel better soon as you get some skitties under your belt.”

The skitties proved to be a species of quasi-shellfish, possessing hemispherical houses. In lieu of the other half of their shell they attached themselves to sedimentary rocks. They were the only form of life that had been able to adapt themselves to the chemicalization of the ancient sea-remnant. The Martian had left them thin flakes of rock. Now he placed the shells in the red-hot coals, and in a very short time the skitties were turning out, crisp and appetizing. Following his host’s example, Murray speared one with the point of his stiletto, blew on it to cool it. It proved to be delicious, although just a trifle salty.

“Drink plenty water with it,” the Martian advised him. “Plenty more about five hundred feet down. Artesian spring there. Fact is, that’s all that keeps that lake from drying up. You ought to see the mist rise at night.”

Murray ate four of the skitties. Then, because the sun was getting ready to plop down, they carefully extinguished the fire, scattering the ashes. The I. F. P. agent felt greatly strengthened by his meal and assisted his host with the evening chores. Nightfall found them in their darkened cave, ready for an evening’s yarning.

“I took the liberty of examining your effects,” the Martian began. “Sort of introduced you to myself. The fact that you wore the Martian army uniform was no fine recommendation to me, though I once wore it myself. Your weapons I hid, except for the knife you needed to eat. But you’ll find them in that little hollow right over your head. The fact that you’re an enemy of Scar Balta is enough for the present. That alone is repayment for the labor of carrying you up all this way.”

Murray then told him of work on Mars. There was no use concealing anything from one who was obviously a fellow fugitive, and who might be persuaded to do away with his guest, should he have strong enough suspicions. He told of the war cabal, of the financial-political oligarchy and its opposing monarchists. He related his own discovery and arrest; the pretended enlistment in Scar Balta’s forces which terminated in Scar’s prompt and ruthless action. When he finished he sensed that he had made a deep impression on his host. The latter spoke.

“What you have told me, Murray, relieves me very much,” he said. “I know that we can work together. You might as well know how I came to be here. Perhaps I look forty or fifty years old. Well, I’m thirty. I was news director for the televisor corporations. I didn’t have to be very smart to realize that a lot of the stuff we were ordered to send out was propaganda, pure and simple. Propaganda for the war interests, propaganda for the financiers. Commercial propaganda too.

“Why, the stuff we put out was a crime! The service to the teletabloids was the worst. You know how they outstrip the news; hired actors take the part of personages in the news. Ever watch ’em? The way they enact a murder is good, isn’t it?”

“We got orders to bear down on your service too, the I. F. P. Your crew has too many points of contact, hiking from planet to planet. The high command couldn’t see things the bankers liked, I guess.

“So whenever a man of the I. F. P. figured in the news we always gave him the worst of it. We hired bums to play his part, criminals, vicious degenerates. People believe what they see that’s the idea. I had seen very few of your men but I knew we were giving them a dirty deal. Orders were orders, though. We got lots of orders we didn’t understand. Then secret deals were made, and those orders countermanded.

“But the order against the I. F. P. remained standing, and we certainly did effective work against ’em. The people had no way of knowing the difference, either, for the company controls all means of communication, and the I. F. P. does most of its work in out of the way places. Why just to show you how effective our work was the people, in a special plebiscite, voted to withdraw their support from the Plutonian campaign! But that was going too far; the financiers quietly reversed that.

“At the same time, we got orders to glorify Wilcox, the planetary president. It was Wilcox signing a bill to feed the hungry after their property had been stripped by the taxes. It was Wilcox the benevolent; Wilcox the superman. Wilcox, in carefully rehearsed dramatic situations, reproduced on the stereo-screens in every home. You know who put over the slogan, ‘Wilcox, the Solar Savior?’ We did it. It was easy!” He laughed shortly.

“The only time we failed was, when they wanted to end, once and for all, the prestige of the royal house. That was after they had bought the assassination of the claimant, his wife and their son. Didn’t dare take Princess Sira too, because she has always been a popular darling. It would have been too raw, wiping out the whole family. They left one claimant, see? And then put it up to us to discredit her!

“Man! That fell down! The first attempt was very smooth, at that. But it brought in such a storm of condemnation they had to drop that.

“You can guess how we boys at the central office felt about it. No wonder we got cynical and lost all self-respect. We couldn’t have stood it at all, but sometimes we’d put on a special party, just to let off steam. Did we rip ’em up high and handsome? The more outrageous the flattery we sent out, disguised as news, the more baldly truthful we were in those early morning rehearsals, with the mikes and telegs dead. Wilcox was our special meat.

“Of course, it was foolhardy. One night a mixer in the room below us got his numbers mixed, killing a banquet program on a trunk channel and sending our outrageous burlesque out instead. When the poor fellow discovered his mistake he made for the bottom of the canal. As for me, I made for the desert. I never heard what became of the others, and that was six years ago. I wonder if I’ve changed much.”

“What’s your name?” Murray asked suddenly.

“Tuman. Nay Tuman.”

“The others must have been caught. As for yourself, orders have been sent all over the solar system to kill you on sight. They hung the killing of that electrician on you.”

“That’s their way!” Nay Tuman absented gloomily. “A price on my head. They thought I’d stow away on some rocket liner, I suppose.”

“Weren’t you afraid some desert rat would give you away?”

“No danger. They’re just about all fugitives themselves. They hid me till I grew this foliage. They showed me how to find food and water where seemingly there was none. The desert isn’t sterile. Why, I know of three or four men within fifty miles of here! Sometimes they stop at my spring for water. As for the harness frames at the fort, those sojers might as well be blind, considering all they miss.”

“You asked a while ago if you’ve changed much. You have. I remember your picture. All of us studied it, because there’s a 100,000 I. P. dollar reward out. You were a slim lad then, not the fuzzy bear you are now. How would you like to go in to Tarog with me? They seem to have us licked now but did you ever hear that the I. F. P. is most dangerous when it’s been thoroughly licked?”

“I don’t know I’m used to the solitude,” Tuman demurred. “In the city I’d be lost.”

But Murray won him over. He had a persuasive way with him.

The next morning they started, guiding their course by the Sun. They made no attempt to travel fast, but the going was easy. Although they rested during the heat of the day, and buried themselves for the nights in the sun-warmed sand, they made about fifteen miles a day. They saw no other human being. These desert dwellers did not meet for mere sociability.

They left the mountains on the second day, descending to the lower level of a broad, sterile plain which was studded by the low, greenish pulp-mounds, that resembled mossy rocks more than vegetation. After two days more they came to a region where huge blocks of stone, of the prevailing orange or brick color, lay scattered around on the plain.

“They look good to me,” Tuman said. “If some patrol comes along now we’ll have plenty of cover, at least. This belt is a hundred miles wide, maybe a little more. Good hunting there. Plenty of desert hogs, as fat and as round as a ball of bovine butter. I can knock ’em over with a rock, and you can use your neuro, in a pinch.”

They did, in fact, succeed in capturing one of the little creatures soon afterward, and, dropping a moistened fire pellet on top of a pulp-mound, soon were roasting their meat.

Not once, however, did either one relax his vigilance. Almost simultaneously they discovered the little black dot that seemed to pop out of the irregular southern horizon. They leaped to their feet, kicked out the fire. They would have covered the ashes with sand but for hundreds of feet in either direction there was nothing but bare rock.

“Never mind!” Murray said. “Let’s make for cover. They may think it’s an old fireplace. With rains only about once in three years that spot will look like that indefinitely.”

“Yes,” Tuman agreed, running along, “if they didn’t see the smoke!”

As the craft neared they could make out the orange and green of the Martian army.

“From the fort,” Murray guessed. “Scar Balta must have had his doubts about me. He ordered them out to finish the job, if necessary.”

“It’s drifting,” Tuman observed. “The driving tail seems to be missing.”

“Well, anyway, it’s coming down, and where an army ship comes down is no place for us.”

They heard the scrape of her keel as she settled down. Murray gave a gasp of surprise.

“Tuman,” he muttered, “that fellow wearing the Martian uniform is an I. F. P. agent named Hemingway. The uniform doesn’t fit and I bet the man he took it from is no longer alive. Do you know the giant with him?”

“Under that dirt and blood, I’d say he’s Tolto, Princess Sira’s special pet. No other man of Mars could be that big! Seven or eight years ago she was just a kid, you know she picked him up in some rural province. Kids just naturally do run to pets, don’t they? And the princess was no exception. But he looks like nobody’s pet now. I’d rather have him peg me with his neuro, though, than to take me in his hands!”

They watched as Sime and Tolto slowly walked about in widening circles, and when they were sufficiently far away Murray and Tuman closed in. They had no expectation of finding the ship unlocked, and wasted no time trying to get it. Instead they climbed a flat-topped block of stone about ten feet high. From this position they could command, with Murray’s neuro, anyone who might seek to enter the ship.

“These fellows are our best hope,” Murray told Tuman. “But we have to convince ’em that we’re friends first. Otherwise we’re liable to be cold meat, and cold meat can’t convince anybody. Keep your head down.”

The necessity of lying flat, in order to keep from silhouetting themselves against the sky, deprived them of the opportunity to see. Nevertheless, they could tell, by the sound of their voices, when Sime and Tolto returned. When it seemed that they were directly beneath, Murray risked a look. There they were.

Murray carefully set the little focalizer wheel for maximum diffusion. He felt sure that it would not be fatal, considering the distance and the physical vigor of the men he meant to hold. He pressed the trigger.

“Get down quick!” he snapped. “I’ll let up for a second; you grab their neuros.”

Tuman executed the order with dispatch. Stepping back, he trained the pistols on their late owners, while Sime and Tolto, a little dazed, stumbled to their feet. A man may argue, or take chances, when menaced by a needle-ray, but mere bravery does not count with the neuros. All men’s nervous systems are similar, and when nerves are stricken, courage is of no avail.