Jim jumped for it. He struck it. His fist struck the great face between its green blazing eyes. The face smashed, cracked like the shell of an egg. Noisome! His fist sank into a soft pulpy mass. He jerked it free. The head rolled backward, the arms waving. “Come on,” Jim shouted. He wiped his fist and arm on his jacket: noisome, horrible! “We’re on the ledge, Ren . . . can’t climb out of the valley. It’s too steep.” “Are they following us?” “No. I can see lights going up the valley. Altho seems to want to lie here, not try to climb higher. If only I could talk to him.” “I’m trying to get Sonya’s thoughts, Jim.” They lay on a dark ledge; a fifty foot drop was before them, a sheer perpendicular wall. They had climbed beside it, where the ground was broken. Over the ledge, some ten feet above it, was another broader space with what seemed a cave-mouth behind it. The crags were dim in the starlight; black gulleys, ravines were everywhere. Below them spread the valley floor. Lights which marked the pursuit had gone past. For a time the three fugitives lay quiet. Jim’s mind went back to the cave from which they had escaped. Two of the brutemen had been on guard. These brutemen were hardly more than animals, like tigers with a lust for human blood. One had murderously entered the cave; the other, listening, had become frightened and decamped, giving the alarm. Jim whispered impatiently, “Ren, can’t you get any thoughts from Sonya?” “No. I’m trying. I feel . . . I feel that Altho is getting them.” It seemed so. Altho was lying with his head down on his hands. Once he uttered a suppressed exclamation, and then he was murmuring as though to himself. “You’re right. He’s getting them,” Jim muttered. “Try again, Ren!” Abruptly Ren exclaimed, “They’re coming! Sonya, with Dolores and Alice.” “Do they know where we are?” “They’re trying to find us. Sonya says they haven’t seen any lights yet to mark our valley. Altho has been trying to direct them.” “Well, for a while we’re safe here. They—” Jim never finished. From down the valley, by the cave-lights of Talon’s encampment, a ball of fire mounted slowly upward, a tiny, blazing white ball. It rose in a slow arc, and suddenly burst with a blinding white glare. The valley, the crags, the ledge upon which the fugitives lay were all momentarily brilliantly illumined. Jim saw that beneath them in the valley a hundred of the mounted heads were gazing upward. And he knew too, that they had been seen upon the ledge. A shout arose; a rush of the figures to climb. But a voice, Talon’s voice, seemed commanding them to stop. Farther down the valley, brutemen were dragging forward a heavy piece of apparatus, a huge gun-muzzle on wheels, the muzzle pointed vertically upward. Jim leaped to his feet. “We’ve got to get higher! Try to get to that cave overhead.” But Altho pulled him back. Altho still held the weapon Jim had taken from the giant. He gestured with it. Jim sank back.