ood unless you want to stick around for a
few million years."

"You think I came out here without a plan?" Slade asked with some
hostility.

"I don't know. You were desperate."

"As long as you're with me I figure they might follow, but they won't
rush me. They might even send over a 'copter, but it won't try
anything. Not with you here. Desperate? I'm not desperate, and don't
you forget it. Desperate you don't think straight. Once is all they
can execute me. I stayed behind, they'd of done it. If they catch me,
they'll do it. What's the difference?"

"You said you had a plan."

* * * * *

They reached the edge of a thrusting headland, an enormous beak-shaped
cliff of beetling black rock which leaned out over the young, still
saltless ocean. Slade paced back and forth quickly, with a powerful
leonine grace, until he found a fault in the rock. The fault tumbled
jaggedly, steeply down almost to the edge of the sea.

"Down there," Slade said. "We'll follow the sea coast back to the
prison."

"Back?" Marcia said in disbelief.

"Hell yes, back. You said it yourself. There's no food out here. Since
there ain't no life, of course there's no food. Oh, it's a great place
for a prison, all right. Whoever thought of it ought to win a prize. A
prison--a billion years in the past. What's the word?"

"Archaeozoic," she supplied.

"Yeah, archaeozoic. An archaeozoic prison. You can escape to your
heart's content, but what the hell's the difference. There's no life
back here, not yet. The Earth's just a baby. So you escape--and you
starve to death. It makes every maximum security jail before this one
look like a kid's piggy bank."

"There hasn't ever been an escape," Marcia said hopefully as they made
their way down to the sea, she in front and Slade behind her with the
M-gun.

"There ain't never been a hostage before."

"No-o."

"There's a hostage now."

Marcia Lawrence took a deep breath and asked suddenly, "Are you going
to kill me?"

"Hell, I don't know. I got no reason to--unless you make me. We're
going back there. We're double-tracking along the beach, get me? Back
to the prison dome."

"But--"

"Adam Slade won't starve to death out here. We'll double back to the
dome--and the time machine."

"Oh," she said. They began to walk along the edge of the sea, its
waters sullen gray, mirroring the sky. Here on this dawn earth the sky
has as yet never been blue, for the primord