xygen and gasoline-jelly to permit the
passage of vehicles, had again become completely overgrown--who could
hope to stamp out that devilishly hardy vegetation, propagating by means
of millions of windblown spores, with mere fire? The broken-down trains
of tractors and trailers, now almost hidden. The stellene garden domes
that had flattened. Here were the relics left by people who had sought
to spread out to safety, to find old goals of freedom from fear.

Several times in Syrtis, Huth and Nelsen descended, using a barren
hillock or an isolated spot of desert as a landing area. That was when
Nelsen first heard the buzzing of the growths.

Twice, working warily with machetes, and holding their flame weapons
ready, they chopped armored mummies from enwrapping tendrils, while
little eye cells glinted at them balefully, and other tendrils bent
slowly toward them. They searched out the space-fitness cards, which
bore old dates, and addresses of next of kin.

In a few more days, Nelsen was flying the 'copter. Then he was out on
his own, watching, searching. For a couple of weeks he hangared the heli
at once, after each patrol, and Nance always was there to meet him as he
did so.

Inevitably the evening came when he said, "We could fly out again,
Nance. For an hour or two. It doesn't break any rules."

Those evening rides, high over Syrtis Major, toward the setting sun,
became an every other day custom, harmless in itself. A carefully kept
nuclear-battery motor didn't conk; the vehicle could almost fly without
guidance. It was good to look down at the blue-green shagginess,
below... Familiarity bred, not contempt, but a decline of dread to the
point where it became a pleasant thrill--an overtone to the process of
falling in love. Otherwise, perhaps they led each other on, into
incaution. Out in the lonely fastnesses of Mars they seemed to find the
sort of peace and separation from danger on the hectic Earth that the
settlers had sought here.

"We always pass over that same hill," Nance said during one of their
flights. "It must have been a beautiful little island in the ancient
ocean, when there was that much water. Now it belongs to us, Frank."

"It's barren--we could land," Nelsen suggested quickly.

They visited the hill a dozen times safely, breaking no printed rule.
But maybe they shouldn't have come so often to that same place. In life
there is always a risk--which is food for a fierce soul. Frank Nelsen
and Na