Their leader's voice rattled over his helmet radio of the ship's telereceiver, "Major, sir, are you sure they want this man in the city now? We just got an alert to look out for a couple of escaped desperadoes." Dyann slammed the outer valve in his face by the remote-control lever and the little ship stood on her tail again and flamed skyward. A somewhat battered Ray Ballantyne crawled out of his suit and blinked at them. It had been a rough two or three days, though they hadn't gone very far with him. The truth drugs must have satisfied them that he was not an intentional spy, and thereafter they had simply held him until orders for his execution should come. He swayed into Dyann's arms. "Oh, my poor Ray," she murmured. "My poor, poor little Earthlin." "Hey, wait a minute," he began weakly. "Just lie still, I will take care of you." "Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. Lemme go!" They sat down again on a remote mountaintop, gave the policeman a spacesuit, and kicked him out of the ship. He was still wailing about barbarous and inhuman treatment. He said something too about wild beasts. "And now," said Dyann, "let us get back to Earth before the Yovians find us." "This crate'll never make Earth," said Ray. "I've flown 'em--let me at those controls, Urushkidan." They heard it as well, the ominous sizzling and knocking from the engine-room shields, and felt the ship tremble with it. "Is tat te carboning te man was talking about?" asked the Martian innocently. "I'm--afraid--so." Ray shook his head. "We'll have to land somewhere before the rockets quit altogether. Then it'll take a week for the radioactivity to get low enough so we can go back there and clean them out." "And all the Yovian army, navy, police, and fire department out chasin us by now," said Dyann. Her clear brow wrinkled. "I fear that Ormun is offended because I left her amon the heathen back there. I am afraid our luck is runnin' low." "And," said Ray bleakly, "how!" IV They used the last sputter of flame to sit down in the wildest and remotest valley they could find. Looking out the port, Ray wondered if they hadn't perhaps overdone it. Beyond the little ship there was a stretch of seamed and gullied stone, a rough craggy waste sloping up toward the fang-peaked razorback ridge of the hills, weird flickering play of shadows between the looming boulders as the thin wind blew a veil of snow across the deep greenish-blue sky. Jupiter was an amber scimitar low on the northern horizon. They were near the south pole with a sprawling panorama of sharp stars around it fading out near the tiny sun. Snow lay heaped in drifts beyond the wind-scoured rocks, and the far green blink of glaciers reflected the pale heatless sunlight from the hills.