un oneself under a dome.

She had chosen the Chateau Nectaris because it was the largest of the
resort spots, and therefore the most likely one to be chosen by men who
sought to hide out for a while. She had contacted the managers of all
the resort chateaus and all had agreed to let her know of the arrival of
any new guests.

There had been three of them during the morning, two arriving by
groundcar and one by copter, at three different chateaus. She had driven
to each one and circumspectly inspected the new guest, but none had been
anyone she recognized from the Childress Barber College.

In a way, she wished she had yielded to Nuwell's importunities. There
was much more of interest to do in Mars City. And Nuwell _was_ charming
and intelligent and rather dashing, and she did love him, and she did
want to marry him. But....

But she was right in wanting to help identify those rebels who had been
captured before she considered her task finished. And perhaps Nuwell had
been right in his implied disagreement with her idea of coming first to
Solis Lacus, so far from Mars City. Logically, would it not be harder to
lose oneself in a fashionable resort area than in a good-sized city? But
something within her had urged her to come here first. It was a hunch,
and she intended to play it.

With a sigh, Maya pushed the hat off her face and stared with exotically
slanted black eyes at the shining blur of the dome hundreds of feet
above her. She sat up, hugging her knees with her arms.

A score of other guests were sunning themselves here also. At her
movement, the unmarried men turned their eyes on her frankly; the
married ones did so furtively, to be promptly yanked back to attention
by their wives.

Maya's onyx eyes surveyed this dullness aloofly, then lifted over the
nearby parapet and across the sparse terrestrial lawn which would grow
only under the dome. The far cliffs of the Thaumasia Foelix Desert
loomed darkly, distorted through the dome's sides.

The dome's airlock opened to admit a groundcar. She watched it,
interestedly, as it scurried like a huge, glassy bug along the curving
road and disappeared under the parapet in front of the chateau. Mail
from Mars City, perhaps, or supplies. Maybe even a new guest.

Something struck her, now that the groundcar was no longer in sight. It
had been a little too far away to discern its details clearly, but there
was something strange about the appearance of that groundcar.