"Thank you, Little Father." Marah plunged into the cave, with the others on his heels. Campbell snarled, "They'll come and take us!" Stella's sullen lips smiled wolfishly. "No. Watch." The cave, the violet fire were suddenly gone. There was a queer darkness, a small electric shiver across Campbell's skin. He started, and the girl whispered: "Telekinesis. They've built a wall of force around us. On the outside it seems to be rock like the cave wall." Marah moved, the bosses on his kilt clinking slightly. "When the swine are gone, there's a trap in this hulk leading down to the pipe where your ship is. Now tell us your plan." Campbell made a short, bitter laugh. "Plan, hell. It's a gamble on a fixed wheel, and you're fools if you play it." "And if we don't?" "I'm going anyway. The Kraylens--well, I owe them something." "Tell us the plan." He did, in rapid nervous sentences, crouched behind the shielding wall of thought from those alien brains. Marah laughed softly. "By the gods, little man, you should have been a Keshi!" "I can think of a lot of things I should have been," said Campbell dourly. "Hey, there goes our wall." It hadn't been more than four minutes. Long enough for them to look and go away again. There might still be time, before the Spaceguard came. There was, just. The getaway couldn't have been more perfectly timed. Campbell grinned, feeding power into his jets with exquisite skill. He didn't have a Chinaman's chance. He thought probably the gypsies had less than that of coming through. But the Kraylens weren't going to rot in the slave-pens of Lhi because of Roy Campbell. Not while Roy Campbell was alive to think about it. And that, of course, might not be long. He sent the Fitts-Sothern shooting toward the night side of Venus, in full view and still throttled down. The Spaceguard ships, nine fast patrol boats, took out after him, giving Romany the go-by. No use stopping there. No mistaking that lean, black ship, or whose hands were on the controls. Campbell stroked the firing keys, and the Fitts-Sothern purred under him like a cat. Just for a second he couldn't see clearly. "I'm sorry, old girl," he said. "But that's how it has to be." * * * * * It was a beautiful chase. The Guard ships pulled every trick they knew, and they knew plenty. Campbell hunched over the keys, sweating, his dark face set in a grin that held no mirth. Only his hands moved, with nervous, delicate speed. It was the ship that did it. They slapped tractors on her, and she broke them. They tried to encircle her, and she walked away from them. That slight edge of power, that narrow margin of speed, pulled Roy Campbell away from what looked like instant, easy capture. He got into the shadow, and then the Spaceguard began to get scared as well as angry. They stopped trying to capture him. They unlimbered their blasters and went to work.