"An inch more to go," Prell shouted, in grim humor. "A rather long one, I'm afraid." Again they crept. Rough stone of the cupboardlike compartment rose around them, seemingly taller than buildings they had known. And it glowed reddish-violet. Fluorescence, it must be, from the scattered radiations of the Midas Touch weapons. Tediously the three crawled toward escape, as if through a night of fire and violence. Finally they reached a minute steel door in the corner of the cupboard, half hidden in the roughness of the stone. They closed the door behind them and refastened its crude bolt. The space around them now was narrower--more in proportion to their own size. And there was a glow here--at least to their final eyesight. Perhaps there was a trace of radioactive ore in the rock causing the glow. The walls were as rough as a cave's. "Just a chink in the stone," Barbara commented. "Yes," Prell replied. "A crevice leading out to the face of the rock formation. Feel the draft of Martian night air? It would smother and freeze you if you were as you were born. But our flesh not only resists cold, it can create plenty of warmth within itself. We will be perfectly comfortable here, and safe--I think. Do you want to rest?" "No," Barbara told him. "We don't really need that, either, do we? So let's begin what must be done. What are our plans, Ed?" "We'll make a few things, if we can," Ed replied. "Then get to a spaceport somehow. I suppose that if we pick the right wind at the right time, it will blow us there--eh, Uncle Mitch? Then we'll do as you did--drift into a space liner and get a free ride back home to Earth. There--well, we'll see. If we're very, very lucky, we might even get our old selves back." Just then that recovery seemed to be his greatest, most desperate yearning, with many, many obstacles in its way. Even their personal recordings were in enemy hands now. Small though those cylinders were, they were far too huge for them to move or to think of recapturing. "Where can we start to work?" Ed said to his uncle. "Farther along the cleft," Prell told him. "I've already cached some supplies there. And there's a level space in a side cleft protected from these constant air currents." Now they leaped upward and let the draft carry them. The muted quivers of destruction in the chambers from which they had just escaped, they left behind them. They arrived in the work area and got busy at once. * * * * *