_Gadar was moving from its orbit!_ Faster it went, and faster, slashing a course towards outer space. The ships of the Federation fleet raced madly from its path. "No--!" _Shi_ Kyrsis cried again. "No, they must not leave me!" Her face was working now, contorted. The silvery tones seemed duller, more like lead. In an awe-struck voice Shane said: "This is the way they must have come! It was no cosmic accident! They hurled their own planet across the void--" "No, no!" the silver woman shrieked, and the wild hysteria in her tones was giving way to madness. "They can't, they can't! I must go with them--!" Her twitching face was no longer human. Then, before anyone could stop her, she turned and ran--out of the door, away from the control room. But outside the room there was no place to run ... only an echoing, well-like shaft that dropped away a hundred feet through the vitals of the ship, its depths linked only by a steel-runged ladder. Unseeing, unheeding, the silver woman plunged over the brink and plummeted downward. Her scream rose and fell in the banshee wail of a soul in torment. It ended with a sound like the bursting of an air-filled paper bag a room or two away. The _Chonya_ sucked in air. He let it out with a sound that might have been pity. White-lipped, Shane said: "There was a _Chonya_ child, a little girl...." Abruptly, he turned away and spun the jet-globe. The ship's commander frowned. "I do not understand, _Gar_ Shane." The Earthman's eyes stayed on the visiscreen. He said: "My road still lies before me. It leads to Quos Reggar, and my great iron belt, and Talu, the _Malyalara_." CHAPTER XIII They picked up the trail in the asteroid belt, in the wreckage of a gutted town. It led to Horla, then, and from there to the burning sands of Mercury's barren wastes, and then back out to the moons of Saturn. But always Reggar was a jump ahead, and always there was blood and death and pillage. Once, on Juno, Shane thought he had him. But Reggar blasted off as the Earthman ramped in, and they lost the trail in the outer asteroids. And then, one night, Shane came to Titan. As always, there was desolation. As always, the great slaveship was gone. And a weeping _bartok_ woman shook her fist at Shane and cried, "So now you come! But they have killed my man. My children starve, and I am left to care for Reggar's cursed, dying _Malyalara_--" Shane turned on her, "A _Malyalara_--? Quos Reggar's _Malyalara_?" An emotion that might have been fear flickered in the woman's eyes, and she would have fled had Shane not caught her arm. "Please, Earthman--!" she pleaded piteously. "My man is still warm in his grave. I say strange things--senseless, without meaning. Please let me go--" And when Shane released her, she scurried off through the rubble like a frightened mouse and disappeared in the ruins of a broken building.