nished swiftly into the distance,
dust-devils dancing across the ground in the whirling wind of their
passage.

Dworn stared after them, and his eyes narrowed. A new and desperate
resolve had begun shaping itself in his mind.

Of the things he had meant to do in life, it was no use thinking any
more of rejoining his people. He was dead to them, for sure--not even a
beetle any more, but only what was left of one, a ghost.... But a holy
duty, stronger than death, remained to him; his father was still
unrevenged.

What he could do against a foe so powerful as those who had just passed
over, he had no idea--but perhaps a ghost could accomplish what a living
man might well deem impossible.

He motioned Qanya peremptorily toward the waiting spider-machine. "Come
on. We're taking your machine, and we're going to find _them_!"

For a moment she seemed to hesitate ... then she obeyed. If her face was
paler than usual, Dworn failed to notice it.

* * * * *

The spider-vehicle lurched and swayed, even its marvelous system of
shock-absorbers protesting as it climbed steeply, straddling upward from
rock to rock.

Dworn clutched at handholds inside the pitching cabin and tried to
combat the sympathetic lurching of his stomach. Qanya huddled tensely
over the controls, slim hands flashing nimbly to and fro as with
incredible deftness she guided the laboring machine.

Dworn risked a glimpse from the turret-windows, then shut his eyes with
a rush of giddiness. They were climbing now up the steepest part of the
great slide, where the mountainside had collapsed in a chaos of
splintered rock and tumbled crags that would have been utterly
impassible for any wheeled vehicle. Below them, the sloping valley floor
they had left appeared from this height entirely flat and sickeningly
far away. And still the cliff-heads frowning above them seemed terribly
remote.

"How ... far?" gasped Dworn.

"It can't be very far now to the top," said Qanya, without glancing up
from her absorbed concentration. Both their lives were in her hands; a
slip, a misstep, and they might fall hundreds of feet among the jagged
rocks to their death.

For seconds at a time, the walking machine poised motionless, one or
more of its clawed limbs groping for footholds. As it clambered
painfully upward, it was hopelessly exposed to attack if it should be
sighted from the air.

_Dworn_, the beetle told himself savagely, _you are n