l miles broad. It appeared to have
a swift current.

I saw sunlight upon the mountain ahead. The darkness had been paling.
Now day suddenly burst upon us. The sun, smaller than on Earth,
mounted swiftly up. It was a flattened, distorted, dull-red disc,
blurred by Wandl's strange atmosphere. We were in a dim red daylight.

Anita twitched at my ankles. "Look back of us!"

We were going up. Venza and Snap, behind us, were in a descending arc.
Above them, far back in the direction from which they had come, two
blobs were visible up against the reddish day sky.

Pursuit? It seemed so. The blobs went down, but came up again,
traveling with rays, like ourselves.

I called to Snap, "Someone after us! Two figures back there!"

He was shouting, "Gregg! Gregg, help!"

My gaze had been on the distant figures. I saw now that at the bottom
of his arc, and starting upward again, Snap had lost Venza. The
impulse of his ray had twitched his ankle from her grasp. Or had she
let loose? He was about a hundred feet above the river, and Venza,
with acceleration downward unchecked, was falling into it.

"Gregg, help! Venza, swim up!" His frenzied call reached me as I used
the attractive ray and Anita and I whirled over and lunged downward.

"Gregg, help! Venza use your arms! Swim!"

She was lying inert, making no effort to keep from falling. Her body
turned slowly, end-over-end. She struck the swiftly-flowing river
surface but did not sink; instead, she half emerged, came up and lay
in a crumpled heap; and with its rapid current, the river carried her
away.

It was several minutes before we could reach Venza. Snap was already
there, floundering on the water, awkwardly maintaining his balance,
bending over Venza. "Gregg, she's unconscious. Fainted again."

The bite of that insect! The thought of it turned me cold.

The river surface was like a very soft rubber mattress. The water
clung to us, wet us. We could not kneel or stand erect; but in sitting
down only a few inches of our bodies were submerged. We floated like
corks, we were so light, and so little water did we displace.

We struggled with Venza across the gluey river surface. She had fallen
near the further shore. Rocks, crags and strewn boulders were passing
as the current swept us along at a speed of about ten miles an hour.
She lay in our arms, eyes closed, her face pallid but calm. She seemed
to breathe rapidly; but that on Wandl was normal.

We landed on the rock