"_Dale...._" The word was a despairing sob as her composure broke and she held tightly to him, crying, her voice coming muffled as she pressed her face against his chest. "Help me, Dale! How can I marry that sadistic beast when it's someone else I can't live without--and he doesn't even know I love him!" "But he does!" He hugged her closer, "He does know, and he loves you even more than you love him." "Are you sure?" She raised a tear-stained face, hope like sunshine through clouds on it. "Are you really sure Val loves me, after all?" "_Val?_" The revelation was like the stunning concussion shock of a blaster beam passing two inches overhead. His vision blurred and there was a hideous roaring in his ears. She was still holding to him for comfort and it seemed to him that was wrong--he should be clinging to her for support.... "_Dale_ ... what's the matter?" "But I thought--" He swallowed with difficulty. "I thought you meant that I was the--" Something struck the top of his head; this time, for certain, the concussion shock of a blaster beam passing close above it. There was a vicious crack as the beam split the tree beyond, then a crash and explosion of wood fragments as a second beam followed the first. He rolled from the log; taking Lyla with him. The arrow bushes shielded them briefly, long enough for them to reach the temporary safety of a small swale. "Dale!" Her dark eyes were wide with puzzled surprise and one small foot was bare from the loss of a sandal. "Someone shot at us!" He thought, _So Narf got his pictures, after all_. "Rootenant!" Alonzo came running. "They are _that_ way--awr spread out to be sure to kirr you." Alonzo motioned with his nose, a movement that seemed to cover all the high ground beyond them. At least, the enemy was not between them and camp. Not yet. A distant shout came, an order from Narf to his men: "_All of you--down that ridge! Get between Hunter and camp!_" "_It's him!_" Her fingers gripped his arm. "He wants them to kill you!" They had fired from a distance too great for his own blaster. He could not defy them from where he now stood. "I'll have to try to get within range of them," he said. "I'll go back--" "_No!_" Her grip on his arm tightened. "Don't leave me, Dale--don't let him find me here." He looked down the length of the swale. At its lower end the ghost tree forest began, dense and concealing--but all down the length of the swale the snarevines lay in thick, viciously barbed entanglements, overlying a bed of sharp rocks and boulders. She could never get to the safety of the ghost trees in time. Narf had his pictures, now. What would he do to her in the insanity of his hatred and triumph when he reached her? "All right, Lyla," he said. "I'll see that you get to the trees--" * * * * * * * * *