ak_, seize it and escape from
this world...."

"Carry Snap and Venza there now? But we don't know where it is. Can we
make Molo lead us?"

But Molo lay unconscious. I could not rouse him.

Anita and I were so alone! We clung together.

"Gregg, look at that sky!"

The mounting wind was tugging at us. It whined through the dark
mountain defiles, surged out over the river where the water now was
beginning to toss with waves crossing the swift current. The sky was
shot with green shafts of radiance. Over us, the lowering, leaden
clouds were scudding, riding the wind.

It burst now upon us; I found suddenly that Anita and I were bracing
against it. A puff dislodged us, so that we were blown a dozen feet,
bringing up against a crag, as though we were balloons.

"Anita--this wind--we can't maintain ourselves here. We...."

Horror checked me at the thought of Venza and Snap, lying there on the
rocks. We saw the body of Wyk, like a great dried insect, lifted by
the wind, whirled like a brown leaf over and over, and carried away.

A little pebble came hurtling and struck me. Then a rain of pebbles,
like hailstones was pelting at us.

The storm was probably caused by the axial rotation of Wandl. The
light-beam upon Earth had been attacked by the Wandl control station
without axial rotation. But to attack the beam from Mars, a
manipulation of Wandl was necessary. The planet's rotation was
started; and suddenly checked. It remained night now, here in this
hemisphere. Perhaps there were natural storm tendencies here; perhaps
the operators of the control station were unduly eager, manipulating
the rotation too suddenly.

At all events, it was frightening. I shouted above its whine and the
clatter of the pebbles: "Hold onto me! We'll get to Venza and Snap."

We reached the two inert forms, where they had blown into a niche
between two boulders. "Can't stay here, Anita."

"No! If it begins again!"

"Over there! A cave!"

We got Venza and Snap into it, just as another gust came, with a rain
of dirt and loose stones pelting past outside.

Suddenly I thought of Molo. "Anita, stay here! Must get to Molo."

"Gregg, no!"

"I must. If we can bring him to consciousness, make him tell us where
the _Star-Streak_ is...."

I flung off her restraining hold. The wind had eased up. I leaped out
into it, swimming. The rocks slid by close under me in a swift
sidewise drift. In a moment I would be carried out over the river. It