ith a back and bottom of gaudy fabric. Above
him was a narrow, sealed roof of stellene. The stone walls showed the
beady fossils of prehistoric Mars. More than probably, these chambers
had been cut in the living rock, by the ancients.

Reclining in another lawn chair beside his was Nance, her eyes closed,
her face thin and pale. He was frightened--until he remembered,
somehow, that she was nearly as well as he was. Beyond her was a
doorway, leading into what seemed a small, modern kitchen. There was a
passage to a small, neat garden, where Earthly vegetables and flowers
grew. It was ceiled with stellene; its walls were solid rock. Looking up
through the transparent roof above him, he saw how a thin mesh of fuzzy
tendrils and whorls masked this strange Shangri-la.

Nelsen closed his eyes, and thought back. Now he remembered most of what
he had been told. "Mitch!" he called quietly, so as not to awaken Nance.
"Hey, Mitch...! Selma...!"

Mitch Storey was there in a moment--dressed in dungarees and work shirt
like he used to be, but taller, even leaner, and unsmiling.

Nelsen got up. "Thanks, Mitch," he said.

Their voices stayed low and intense.

"For nothing, Frank. I'm damned glad to see you, but you still shouldn't
have come nosing. 'Cause--I told you why. Looking for you, Huth burned
out more than five square miles. And if folks get too smart and too
curious, it won't be any good for what's here..."

Nelsen felt angry and exasperated. But he had a haunting thought about a
lanky colored kid in Jarviston, Minnesota. A guy with a dream--or
perhaps a prescient glimpse of his own future.

"What's a pal supposed to do?" he growled. "For a helluva long time
you've answered nobody--though everyone in the Bunch must have tried
beaming you."

"Sure, Frank... Blame, from me, would be way out of line. I heard you
guys lots of times. But it was best to get lost--maybe help keep the
thickets like they are for as long as possible... A while back, I began
picking up your voice in my phones again. I figured you were heading for
trouble when you kept coming with your girl to that same hill. So I was
around, like I told you before... Sorry I had to hit you and give you
the needle, but you were nuts--gone with Syrtis. Getting you back here,
without Huth spotting the old heli I picked up once at a deserted
settlers' camp was real tough going. I had to land, hide it and wait,
four or five times. And you were both plenty sick. But