suiting bulged with internal pressure as Denver slid through the airlock and left the ship behind. Walking carefully against the treachery of moonweak gravity, he made cautious way up the slope toward the clustered buildings. Footing was bad, with the feeling of treading upon brittle, glassy surfaces and breaking through to bury his weighted shoes in inches of soft ash. A small detour was necessary to avoid upthrusting pinnacles of lavarock. In the shadow of these outcroppings he paused to let his eyes adjust to the brilliance of sunlight.

A thin pencil-beam of light stabbed outward from behind the nearer building. Close at hand, one of the lava-needles vanished in soundless display of mushrooming explosion. Sharp, acrid heat penetrated even the insulating layers of suit. A pressure-wave of expanding gas staggered him before it dissipated.

Denver flung himself instinctively behind the sheltering rocks. Prone, he inched forward to peer cautiously through a V-cleft between two jagged spires. Heat-blaster in hand, he waited events.

Again the beam licked out. The huddle of lava-pinnacles became a core of flaming destruction. Half-molten rock showered Denver's precarious refuge. He ducked, unhurt, then thrust head and gun-arm above the barricade.

wo dark figures, running awkwardly, detached themselves from the huddled bulk of buildings. Like leaping, fantastic shadows, they scampered toward the mounds of deep shadow beneath the ridge. The route took them away from Denver, making aim difficult. He fired twice, hurriedly. Missed. But near misses because he had not focused for such range.

By the time he could reset the weapon, the scurrying figures had disappeared into the screening puddles of shadow. Denver tried to distinguish them against the blackness, but it lay in solid, covering mass at the base of a titanic ridge. Faintly he could see a ghostly outline, much too large for men. It might be a ship, but it would have to be large enough for a space-yacht. No stinking two-man sled like his spacer. And he could not be sure in that eerie blankness if it even were a ship.

Besides, the range was too great. Uncertainty vanished as a circle of light showed briefly. An airlock door opened and closed swiftly. Denver stood clear of the rocks and wondered if he should risk anything further. Pursuit was useless with such arms as he carried. No question of courage was involved. A man is not required to play quixotic fool under such circumstances. And there might not be time to 

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