Alan gagged but did not have time to be sick. He stood up and saw Haddix fleeing toward the escarpment which hid Red Sands. He fired once, but the range was too great, the wind too strong. Keifer and Laura were fighting for the second atomic pistol, Laura kicking him, raking his face with her fingernails and keeping him away from General Olmstead, who lay motionless on the sand. Keifer struck her brutally across the jaw with his fist, then turned, fired once in Alan's direction without aiming, and sprinted toward the escarpment. Laura was unconscious. General Olmstead was unconscious or dead. Alan's limbs were like water. He knew Keifer would bring help. He had perhaps three minutes. Somehow, he managed to drag Laura and her father inside the warp-ship. He slammed the outer airlock door, closed the inner door, staggered to the controls. Figures, tiny black dots against the barren ochre wilderness, were running toward the ship when Alan took it up into space under five G's acceleration. Everything was going to be all right, he thought, and fainted. * * * * * Something cool was stroking his forehead, bathing the caked blood from his face. He was aware that his tunic and blouse had been removed, aware of a clean white bandage on his arm. Laura's face swam in and out of focus before him. "Where are we?" he asked. Laura did not answer. He looked at the controls. Seventy five thousand miles out from Mars, heading toward Earth. Present speed, thirty eight miles per second, still increasing. He could feel the gentle acceleration pressure, probably one and a half G's, tugging at him. "Are we being followed?" he asked Laura. "No. I don't know. Please. Please!" "What's the matter?" "Dad. He's--dead. Alan, Keifer killed him." Laura was crying silently, her shoulder shaking with sobs, her eyelids closed tightly, the tears streaming from them down her cheeks. "He's--dead...." Alan stood up and walked to where he had dragged General Olmstead's inert form. A hole in the General's tunic revealed the wound. There was no pulse beat in his wrist. First my father, Alan thought. First Richard Tremaine. Now General Olmstead. They were on opposite sides, the one championing freedom for the Outworlds, the other opposing it. But there had been nothing violent about their disagreement. It had been a political battle, waged in the arena of politics. And when Richard Tremaine had been granted Equal Union for his people, General Olmstead had bowed graciously to Earth's decision. Under other circumstances, they could have been friends, Alan's dead father and Laura's. Now they were dead. Both struck down by Bennett Keifer. Alan wondered if it were always that way. The bad people rising to the top, like scum on water, employing treachery and violence to achieve their ends. "It will be more than a vendetta," he said out loud. "What did you say?"