He wondered if he'd ever see her again. But it was no time for wondering, or thinking. He had a job to do, out there in the stretching, scorching, windswept deserts. Silently, he eased open the cabin door. The passageway outside was echoing, deserted. Quick, quiet, he pulled the portal closed behind him and ran cat-footed for the nearest exit hatch. A Callistan paced to and fro close by it, on guard. Jarl waited till the creature turned, then leaped and clubbed it down with the barrel of his ray-gun. In seconds, he was spinning back the hatch-bolts. The hatch swung wide, and night poured in ... the blistering, dust-choked desert night, pale with the light reflected by looming Venus' unbroken mists and billowing cloud-banks. Somewhere, out there, were primitives in hideous metal masks, so fierce that even the almighty Federation at last had forbidden this satellite to all men. Perhaps, too, here were robots ... towering metal monsters from beyond the stars, brought down by destiny in its strange workings to save the outlaw worlds. Or perhaps not. Perhaps this seared and storm-swept ball held only the end of Wassreck's dreams ... and death. Jarl Corvett smiled a thin, wry smile. At least, he'd know the answer soon. Breathing deep, he swung out through the hatch and dropped down on Womar.... CHAPTER VIII Morning on Womar. The hot winds were flames whipping at Jarl's face, and the driven sand slashed and burned like pelting needles. Slowly, the night died and, off to his right, the sun rose--fiery, incandescent. Venus, to his left, stretched in a great, shining arc as far as the eye could see. Dust swirled about him in smothering clouds. He wallowed through a sea of powdery, ankle-deep grit where rocks shoved up in hidden reefs to trap him. Hollows loomed in his bloodshot eyes like chasms, and hillocks grew to mountains up which he toiled on hands and knees, choking and gasping. His cheeks were rasped raw now, his lips all parched and cracking. Still he lurched onward--lost and disoriented, without destination. But not without goal. A goal--? He laughed aloud--the muddled, drunken laughter of a heat-twisted brain. Yes, he had a goal; but it was the goal of utter madness. For somewhere in this blazing waste, Womar's primitives lay waiting. He knew; he'd seen them charge before. How they sensed an alien's coming was a secret no stranger had ever fathomed. But sense it they did; so they'd hide and wait, till at last the sun and dust and slashing wind had done their work and the invader fell and could not rise. Then, and then only, they would come, from whatever dark, hidden maze they came from. Their blood-thirsting screams would rise above the howling wind, and their hideous metal masks would flash like mirrors of madness in the white flame of the sunlight.