At the first yell, he gave up the pretense and regained his feet with a lithe bound. For the next sixty seconds, he needed every last smidgin of concentration to escape taking a fatal spill on the sloping rocks. Hurtling downward in great leaps, he was forced to hurdle large rocks because his velocity prevented him from changing course by even a foot. Once he skidded, thinking his time had come. Near the bottom, where the incline curved to meet the horizontal, he did go down, ploughing up a spatter of loose chips and pebbles. He was up and running again without quite knowing how. A dark shape loomed up before him, a rock twice his height. Before passing it, he took the chance of looking back. The litter party was in a state of confusion. The officer and two soldiers were bounding after him, slanting away on a more reasonable path. One Syssokan was still in the process of picking himself up, and most of the others were either milling about or just beginning to heed their leader's shouts to follow Taranto. The intention of yelling to Meyers flashed across his mind but he dismissed it as being useless. A hasty glance in the opposite direction showed him the fire trail settling behind another ridge to his right front. The valley bore a certain resemblance to a meteor crater. Taranto sprinted past the huge rock and bore right toward the distant ridge. He would try to locate the ship if and when he reached the ridge. The immediate necessity was to keep out of the clutches of the burial party. Running in the starlit darkness was risky, as he soon found. The ground was strewn with occasional patches of loose stone, traps of nature suitable for tripping the unwary or causing a sprain. The only thing that kept Taranto reckless was the sounds of pursuit behind him. He had gone about two hundred yards when he realized that some of the rock-scattering noises came from his right more than from behind. The Syssokan were better runners than he, and used to the local terrain besides. He could not tell whether they had seen the trail of the spaceship or, if so, whether they connected it with him. _But they know enough to head me off, whichever way I go_, he thought. He came unexpectedly to a patch of sand, and swore as he felt his speed slacken. A desperate glance over his shoulder revealed no pursuers, though he knew they were there somewhere. He could see two runners who had flanked him on the right fifty yards off; and these forced him into bearing away from his desired course. Instead of passing to the right of a tall outcropping of rock ahead, he turned left. It took him farther from the direction of the spaceship, but there was no help for it. He floundered over a low dune of sand and then was out of it and running on flat ground. He circled to the left of the hill, hearing a howl from the rear. _Must have seen me against the open valley_, thought Taranto. _They sound closer than I like._