Together the three hastened along the winding passages through which Carthoris and Kar Komak had tracked the Dusarians by the marks of the latter’s sandals in the thin dust that overspread the floors of these seldom-used passage-ways. They had come to the chamber at the entrances to the lifts before they met with opposition. Here they found a handful of guardsmen, and an officer, who, seeing that they were strangers, questioned their presence in the palace of Astok. Once more Carthoris and Kar Komak had recourse to their blades, and before they had won their way to one of the lifts the noise of the conflict must have aroused the entire palace, for they heard men shouting, and as they passed the many levels on their quick passage to the landing stage they saw armed men running hither and thither in search of the cause of the commotion. Beside the stage lay the _Thuria_, with three warriors on guard. Again the Heliumite and the Lotharian fought shoulder to shoulder, but the battle was soon over, for the Prince of Helium alone would have been a match for any three that Dusar could produce. Scarce had the _Thuria_ risen from the ways ere a hundred or more fighting men leaped to view upon the landing stage. At their head was Astok of Dusar, and as he saw the two he had thought so safely in his power slipping from his grasp, he danced with rage and chagrin, shaking his fists and hurling abuse and vile insults at them. With her bow inclined upward at a dizzy angle, the _Thuria_ shot meteor-like into the sky. From a dozen points swift patrol boats darted after her, for the scene upon the landing stage above the palace of the Prince of Dusar had not gone unnoticed. A dozen times shots grazed the _Thuria_’s side, and as Carthoris could not leave the control levers, Thuvia of Ptarth turned the muzzles of the craft’s rapid-fire guns upon the enemy as she clung to the steep and slippery surface of the deck. It was a noble race and a noble fight. One against a score now, for other Dusarian craft had joined in the pursuit; but Astok, Prince of Dusar, had built well when he built the _Thuria_. None in the navy of his sire possessed a swifter flier; no other craft so well armoured or so well armed. One by one the pursuers were distanced, and as the last of them fell out of range behind, Carthoris dropped the _Thuria_’s nose to a horizontal plane, as with lever drawn to the last notch, she tore through the thin air of dying Mars toward the east and Ptarth. Thirteen and a half thousand haads away lay Ptarth—a stiff thirty-hour journey for the swiftest of fliers, and between Dusar and Ptarth might lie half the navy of Dusar, for in this direction was the reported seat of the great naval battle that even now might be in progress. Could Carthoris have known precisely where the great fleets of the contending nations lay, he would have hastened to them without delay, for in the return of Thuvia to her sire lay the greatest hope of peace.