After two near brushes with patrols, Ferris finally decided that it would be safer to descend to the streets. Dragnets spread over the world above the city, and only luck had kept the trio from being sighted a dozen times. They were near the edge of the city where the half-bubble of the dome comes down into a series of cones which are the great airlocks protecting the city-atmosphere from the troubled violence and noxious fumes of outer Venus. Like shadows the fugitives descended, going down darkened spirals of stairways, stealing elevators, moving furtively among dark, twisting alleyways, crawling under vast landing stages and skirting heaps of exotic Venusian produce ready for shipping to the nine inhabited worlds. In the cluttered dockland areas they collided blindly with an armed patrol. Angel, acting on pure instinct, leaped high, then swooped down like a striking hawk. The rustle of his opened wings was like the flapping of wind-whipped flames. His outstretched arms gathered two of the four man patrol and crushed life from them before they sensed danger. Ferris was almost as quick. He leaped and strangled, and a man died in swift, deadly silence. Pao Chung, unused to managing his own violence, was clumsier. A blaster went off. Then Angel took over the difficulty. The soldier broke and ran, screaming, firing his blaster twice more without aiming. The uproar would bring help. But the soldier was beyond help. Angel soared and dived. There was no fight. Now armed, the fugitives fled swiftly. Pao Chung took over the lead. By devious streets and crooked alleys, they went in the extremes of haste. Further caution was useless. Now that the alarm had been given, speed was the only hope. Pao Chung knew every secret rat-run in the old native quarter. He used most of them. If the passage of the fugitives caused a ripple of excitement among the polyglot denizens of that forbidding area, they did not know it, nor heed it. All three knew the natives well enough to be certain that the police could expect no favors from that source. All Venusians are natural anarchists, born outlaws and rebels against authority. The trail would die on stubborn tongues unless mechanical trackers were used. Even then, unless the police and security squads came in massed force, there would be incidents to delay pursuit. Natives, and the human debris of nine worlds which had found refuge in the quarter, had no reason to love authority. In one sense, the area was an armed camp within the walls. Uneasy truce at best existed between these motley dwellers and the intruding minions of the nominal officialdom. While the hunted could expect no actual help from the guerrilla forces of Castarona's underworld, there was the certainty of hindrance to the hunters.