stones was well down
the saurian's throat. Then he set out for The Pass. He was painfully
hungry now, but he was light-hearted. Never again would he have to
risk the death that infested the Great Sea-Swamp. Within thirty days
he would be home--home on Earth. He and Beth would get a little house
out in the country and have a little garden, and he could relax and
watch his daughter grow up. She was only seven now. It wasn't too
late.

* * * * *

It was dark when he got to The Pass, the sinister city where he'd seen
men killed for a twenty-dollar bill, where girls had been sold over
the counter for fifty. He knew better than to go directly to Netse,
for the Jovian and the Uranian had a sort of throat-cutting
partnership in the underworld, and while Grant was sure Netse would
help him directly to get a bigger cut, he knew also that Netse
wouldn't want to be too obvious about it.

So Grant, by this time weary in the shoulders from carrying his
equipment, turned down Thorium Avenue toward Nellie's Boarding House.
But under the first streetlight he was stopped by a grimy boy. This
was notable, because the boy was an Earthman. There weren't too many
Earthmen in The Pass.

"Where you been, Hard-Luck Russell?" the boy asked insolently.

Grant's throat was dry. He knew what that meant. Nobody who knew
Hard-Luck Russell would bother to stop him unless they had orders to
do it--orders that came from Relegar.

"In the Swamp," Russell said, swallowing hard.

The kid stared at the diving-suit in Grant's hand, stared at Grant's
face with a sharp, penetrating, unashamed inquisitiveness that made
Grant use all of his will-power to stare back. The kid suddenly
disappeared.

Grant forced himself not to walk faster. The kid had put the finger on
him. It was the first time Relegar had ever done that. Those damned
eyes! Relegar must know what Grant had found, and the knowledge that
the Uranian knew about the stones made him weak. Relegar was a bad
spider.

Grant's impulse was to run but he forced himself to be steady. Now he
didn't dare go straight to Netse. He went on to Nellie's place and
hammered on the door. "Oh, it's you. Come on in." Nellie opened the
door. Nellie was a Martian, a century-plant, and nobody knew whether
it was he or she or whether it made any difference, but they called it
"she" and they called it "Nellie."

Grant went in. Nellie's leaves rustled and that queer whispery voice