Next time they stopped the girl turned to Asa with a frown and asked, "Just how does Dorr think he can get away with this?" "Simple." Asa shrugged. "He'll say the Sliders got us despite all he could do. No muck man who could tell a different story will live long enough to get back to Earth." The sound of a rocket explosion came from somewhere off to their right. It was the loveliest sound Asa had ever heard. "The rescue party!" he shouted. "Let's go!" Knowing that rockets meant Sliders, but knowing also that no Slider was a match for a team of armed men, Asa leaped forward with renewed vigor. Once he misjudged his strength and landed in a puddle, splashing both of them with slimy water, but the girl on his back only laughed. They heard the sound of another rocket, and Harriet fired three shots of her own to attract attention. In a few more minutes they were happily welcoming six muck men. "I heard your message," said one of them, "and back at the settlement Kershaw told us what had happened. Furston tried to stop us and wound up with a knife in his belly. A couple of the others were afraid to come, and two were shot from the tower by Dorr, but the rest are with you." "Tom Dorr will be tried for murder," Harriet promised grimly. With different men taking turns carrying Harriet for short distances they began to make progress rapidly. The Slider the men had been firing at was dead and no more were sighted before they came to the settlement. Dorr was waiting for them. He fired from the tower, his machine-gun burst of rockets cutting through one man in mid-leap. Asa's party hugged the mud and fired back. Plastic showered from the tower window, and dust spurted from the concrete around it. "Keep me covered," Asa shouted. He took the gun from Harriet and leaped madly forward until he was under the shelter of the side of the dome. He waited for one more salvo from his party and jumped to the tower itself. Dorr had vanished, driven out of the tower by the rockets. Asa waved to the others to come forward and hopped into the main quarters of the dome. He had never been in this part of the settlement. Dorr could be lying in ambush for him. Asa moved cautiously, but he was confident that his own adjustment to the gravity of the planet would give him the advantage in any sudden meeting. He looked around the corner and down some stairs just in time to see the discredited manager, holding a sack in one hands, struggle to open a door. Asa fired and missed. The next moment Dorr was outside. Asa leaped to the floor below. One of the normal humans who lived in the settlement came out of another room, saw Asa and dodged back out of sight. Outside, Asa could see Dorr laboring to run along the paved road that led to the spaceship a quarter of a mile away. The fugitive turned once and fired wildly as Asa leaped after him. The mist was turning into heavy rain, and it was getting harder to see.