Milder days came. At noon the temperature reached fifty degrees F. The country brightened in pastel beauty after the vernal storms. There were gorgeous flowerlike growths. The tracks would vanish and appear again, seeming to mark no single trail but a series of excursions from somewhere among the hills to the south. Once Doran and Joe heard a thin halloo or scream of defiance. One of their two air-compressors quit beyond repair, making it twice the job to fill their oxygen flasks. This could be fatal, now. Soon after they entered the hill-gorges there was a rock-fall, too close to be a thing of accident or coincidence. Later there was a swift-dying flicker that turned a spot of dust incandescent. Later that afternoon, amid blue shadows from towering monoliths, Joe met an attack as sudden and savage as a bobcat's. The creature sprang down at him from a ledge, clawing, kicking, striking with a knife. Joe had a bad time until his greater strength won. Doran helped hold her nephew down. Will Terry was battered, hardened, scarred--scarcely recognizable with his teeth bared. But, oddly, Joe knew just what to say to soothe him. "Will, you can see that we're like you. Maybe we don't want to be, but we are, now. We can't drag you back again to Port Laribee." The kid relaxed a little. His pale eyes turned puzzled but wary. "About the other boy, Will--Danny Bryant?" Doran asked. Will's lip curled. "He was weak and dumb," he said, fumbling with unused words. "I took him back long ago." "You did fine, Will," Joe said. "Now what have you found here in the hills? You've been camping in one place for a while. Show us." Joe had to use harsh command against the sullenness still in the boy. He did so bluntly, driven by grim hope and need. Thus, before sunset, Doran and he found something they needed. "Dad wanted such a place," the kid said, half-proudly. * * * * * It was less than optimism promised--just a small, deep valley, pretty as a painting, but quietly forbidding, too. Joe had seen others almost like it. Martian growths clogged it, sprouting new blue-green leaves. The ruins were far less damaged than in the cities. There were countless little domes of the ant-creatures, indicating some underground water. Nimbly Will led the way downward and across the valley to a stout structure. It was not very unusual, just another relic in a region away from the fiercest path of war. Here might have been a last refuge, after the death of millions, the breakdown of machinery, and the rapid worsening of Martian climatic conditions. Crystal roofs lay shattered around the ornate central massiveness. But one wing with thicker glaze still stood--sealable. Doran's eyes lighted as she and Joe and her nephew went into the deserted interior through the double doors of an airlock which some last, fleeing Martian had not closed.