ack. He was outside the copter, near it, keeping pace with it
as it flew. It was tilted slightly forward, falling forward through the
sky at the pull of its blades.

Dark seized the copter with his mind. He tried to drag it back.

It hesitated. It quivered. Then it jerked forward and went on. He felt
his mental grasp slipping from it.

Suddenly he was completely in the big room in Ultra Vires, the room with
its roof open to the sky. He could no longer touch the copter. He could
no longer be in it. He could no longer touch Maya's mind.

He tried. He reached out again. But he failed. He was where he was.

He realized he was almost exhausted. The tremendous drain of his efforts
on his energy told on him at last. He no longer had the strength to try
any more, and Nuwell and Maya were gone away from him into the Martian
sky.

Wearily, he turned back and went through the airlock, down the corridor
and down the stairs.

There was nothing more he could do now. Nuwell undoubtedly would take
Maya to Mars City. And then?

Maya would refuse to marry Nuwell now, and Dark doubted that Nuwell
could force her. What Nuwell would do with her, he did not know.
Probably some sort of confinement, eventually perhaps a trial. But
Nuwell had no ground or reason to do her any real harm.

He would have to try to get to Maya as soon as he could, and that meant
intensification of his efforts. But there was only one course he could
hope to follow successfully, and that was the course he had planned when
he started out for Ultra Vires.

Only now he _could_ speed it up.

He had to have some rest. Then he would pick up three marsuits and walk
back across the desert to the Canfell Hydroponic Farm.

15

Dark walked across the desert toward the Canfell Hydroponic Farm.

He had discarded the marsuit he had been wearing, and substituted for it
a light loincloth torn from one of Goat Hennessey's sheets. This
reverse reaction, in a temperature that would be uncomfortably chilly
for a fully clothed man and descended far below zero at night, resulted
from his recognition that he gained a tremendously greater direct influx
of energy from the total exposure of his skin to the sunlight. He could
feel the energy penetrating his flesh, building up in him. And, with
this energy, the low temperature did not bother him.

Behind him, by a rope, he dragged a little two-wheeled cart he had
constructed from groundcar parts. It rolled and bumped