The militiamen flanked them on either side as they walked across the desert, two uniformed figures remaining behind long enough to cover the jet-copter with an ochre-colored tarpaulin which would effectively camouflage it from the air. It was like something from the Arabian Nights, Alan thought as they approached a low, rocky escarpment thrusting up through the sand. The leader of the militiamen placed his hand against a polished spot on the surface of the rock, which pulsed with the contact as a hidden device checked the pattern and whorls of the militiaman's fingerprints. The effect was the same as the Open Sesame of the Arabian Nights, for a great slab-like section of the escarpment rolled ponderously aside, revealing a dark cavity. "Red Sands," the militiaman said proudly, and led the way inside. Alan was totally unprepared for what happened next. The door in the rock rolled shut behind them. Lights blazed inside the cavern, brighter than the pale Martian day. A throbbing, busy city was spread out before them below the surface of Mars. Throngs of men, women and children lined the short road to the city on both sides. A great cry went up from them as Alan, the militiamen, General Olmstead and his daughter approached. "Hail, Tremaine!" The cry echoed from the rock walls of the underground city. "Hail, Tremaine!" It rolled from the far throbbing reaches of the bustling city. "Tremaine, Tremaine, Tremaine!" _Not for me_, Alan thought. _For my father._ What actually did he know about all this? Perhaps a revolution directed from the secret base here at Red Sands _had_ been his father's secret dream. The adulation with which the people of Red Sands greeted him filled him with a sense of pride. Not for his own accomplishments, but for his father's. Laura Olmstead was, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, part of a different world. Alan shrugged, deciding to suspend judgment until he met and talked with Bennett Keifer. Now there were cries of: "He looks like his father!" "See, the same brow, the same bearing!" "The eyes are the same, I tell you. We have Richard Tremaine with us all over again!" And always, from all sides: "Hail, Tremaine!" Alan caught Laura's gaze and tried to smile at her. She was on the verge of tears. "The sycophantic hypocrites," she said. "It's disgusting, carrying on like this while people are dying all over the solar system." "It isn't for me," Alan told her desperately. "It's in memory of my father." Laura's eyelids squeezed shut. Tears on her cheeks, she walked blindly ahead, supported by her father's arm. "I hate you, Alan Tremaine," she said. * * * * * "Tremaine," Bennett Keifer said half an hour later, shaking his hand with vigorous enthusiasm. "You look so much like your dead father I could have picked you out of any crowd. Sit down, boy."