"I'm going to get Keifer. My whole life will stand still until I can get him. Not because he killed them, not entirely for that. Because of who he is and what he stands for and how he'll use treachery and violence like this for his own ends. Because Equal Union and parliamentary routine never satisfied a man like him and never will. Because he can stop the flow of water to Mars and watch his own people crying for water if it serves his purposes to incite them against Earth. I'll get him, Laura. I promise you that." He wrapped General Olmstead's body in an old Federation flag which he found in a rear cabin of the warp-ship. "It isn't the globe and stars of Earth," he said softly, "but it's the Federation my father stood for, the real Federation." Laura nodded. "Dad would have wanted it that way." Alan carried his flag-draped burden to the airlock, placed it in the chamber, then stepped back and bolted the inner door. Laura stood silently for a moment with her head bowed while Alan recited what he could remember of the 23rd Psalm. Somehow, it cleaned some of the hatred from his system and left cold clear purpose in its place. The prayer was for his father too and all the free people who had ever died and would ever die fighting tyranny. "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, for Thou are with me. Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me...." Alan pulled the lever which controlled the outer door of the airlock. General Olmstead found his final resting place in the deep void of space where he had spent most of his life in the service of his fellow men. CHAPTER VI "Five hundred thousand miles out from Earth," Laura said, two weeks later. "I still don't get it," Alan admitted. "They didn't even try to follow us. It's as if Keifer suddenly didn't care whether we escaped to Earth or not." "Maybe he believes we're going to have our hands full trying to get Earth to repair the space-warp. Maybe he knows we won't be able to bother him or interfere with his plans." But Alan shook his head, his brow creasing into a frown. "No that's not it. I just can't figure it." He walked to the fore viewport and gazed at the legions of stars against the black velvet immensity of space. In the upper right hand corner of the viewport he could see the Earth-moon system, the larger sphere pale green, mottled with white and brown, the smaller a dazzling white. He realized all at once that he had two homes. The Mars of his boyhood, the Earth and New Washington University, where he had spent his young manhood. He could never forsake one for the other. He was as much of Earth as he was of Mars, the verdant green richness of the one tugging at him with no less force than the arid, wild frontier of the other.