swivel-mounted heat-gun. Shaan saw the muzzle of the weapon begin to swing slowly toward him.

As MkDowl's head came in view in the windshield to aim, Shaan's own beam penetrated the glass at full power. Hair aflame, MkDowl slumped forward over the wheel.

MkDowl's body evidently hit the forward drive lever, for the groundcar suddenly plunged toward Shaan, wheels spinning. Shaan ducked behind the house and ran for the front door.

As Shaan reached the door, the groundcar caromed off the edge of the house. Without slackening speed, it plunged across the yard and plowed through the side of the dome near the airlock. The plastic hemisphere began to collapse with a whistle of escaping air.

In desperate haste, Shaan got into the marsuit in the hall. He switched on its oxygen supply. He opened a cabinet beside the marsuit rack and got a map of Mars, shoving it into a breast pocket of the suit.

Shaan started for the front door. Then he stopped.

Could he depend on the soldiers finding the two girls when they arrived? Could he even know for sure that soldiers were coming? Mars City might have instructed Vali just to shoot him down. If the girls awoke from suspended animation in the thin Martian air, their simulated death would become real.

Shaan went back into the bedroom. He took Lori under one arm, Vali under the other. They were easy to carry in Martian gravity.

The plastic of the dome had settled, clinging. He had to burn his way through the diaphragm of it that barred the door.

Carrying the girls, he walked across the wrinkled plastic to the ground. Half a mile away, the groundcar had overturned in the canal sage. Fed by the oxygen from beneath the plants, it was burning slowly.

Shaan laid the girls on the ground in the cleared area around what was left of the dome. They could be seen easily here by anyone approaching by air.

What next? He pulled the map from his pocket and opened it.

It was easy to see why he had remembered MkDowl Dome would be here. It was the only dome in Alpheus Canal. There were no others anywhere within walking distance—or in crawling distance, when his oxygen supply failed. There was Charax, about 1,800 miles southeast. Mars City was about the same distance north, and 

 Prev. P 13/15 next