But between them and the opposite hills the tide of maddened denars flooded onward as they had two days before. They could only hope to find a hiding place until the stampeding herds were gone, a useless plan for they had caught glimpses of a trailing party of warriors several times.

"If we could only find an impregnable position," Nard Rost told them, "until help can reach us."

"You reached them at last?" demanded Besan, tapping Nard Rost's bracelet broadcaster.

The instructor nodded. "About ten minutes ago. Signals are very faint but they're sending a dirigible. By midday probably."

"Besan," said Relsa Dav tensely, "to the right!"

Lifa whirled and her hand stole inside her scanty garment to where the sacks of goorn dust and her knife rested.

A smaller rift, a miniature gorge snaking down into the gulch they followed, lay revealed. And sprinting down its rocky floor came four well-armed warriors of the pursuing band! In a matter of seconds they would be blocking the trail ahead.

Besan looked ahead and at the rocky slope to their left. A steep trail, a brushy wet-weather watercourse, led upward to the gulch's bare rim.

"Quick," he ordered. "Up with you!"

They scrambled upward, the girls ahead and Nard Rost after them. The savages realized that they had been seen and their shouts boomed through the air to their fellows behind.

The watercourse climbed yet more steeply so they were forced to pull themselves upward by projecting roots and branches. A moment later they stumbled, one by one, over the lip of the little gulch and paused to catch their breath.

They had reached a table-like flat of some sixty odd feet across. At either end jumbled rocks sloped gradually downward and directly opposite a higher sheer escarpment blocked progress. Their only escape lay to the right, away from their pursuers.

Besan led the way. He chose a course through the broken rocks that tried their wasted strength least. Yet he knew that before long they must halt and attempt to make a stand—

Suddenly he halted and the sword knife was in his hand.

A menacing elephantine shape loomed up in his path, a reddish-haired bearlike 

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