without even trying! For God's sake don't question—don't question things you don't understand! Take the credit and let the soul-searching go!

He looked behind him again. They were still there. A special, smiling farewell escort, watching a single, solitary figure cross a short expanse of sand to a towering, glistening thing of power.

He raised a booted foot to the bottom fin-step, hauled himself up by the stern mounting rungs, hammered the outer lock stud with his gloved fist and the hatch swung open. Like a trap.

He could feel the skin at the back of his neck tighten but he forced himself to ignore it. The lock cycled up to thirteen psi and the inner port swung automatically inward, and then he was inside, clambering up the narrow ladder past the titanium alloy fuel tanks and the spidery catwalks between them to the tiny control room in the forehull.

He would not be waiting for Harrison and Janes. He would get the hell out of here and then radio them and let them make all the decisions from there. Earth for him. Home. He ached for it.

He strapped himself in the hammock, punched the warming studs for each engine, and there was a dull, muffled throb below him as each jumped into subdued life. The banks of dials that curved in front of him glowed softly, and he started an almost automatic blast-off check. It took twelve precious minutes.

Then he was ready. Scanners on, heat up ... ready.

The Martian sky was like frozen ink above him and his hands were wet inside his gloves and there was a choking dryness in his throat. Now....

And he could not move. There was a sudden, awful nausea and his head spun, and before his eyes there spread a bleeding Earth; the sun dimmed, and fertile plains were cast in sudden shadow.... The air chilled, the shadow spread, and there were skeletons reaching upward to a puffy, leaden sky!

And Earth was no longer what Men had built!

Then the horror in his head was gone, and he felt an awful pressure on each side of it. His hands ... he had been pressing with insane strength at both sides of his skull as if to crush it with his bare hands.... His face was wet, and he was breathing, choking, in strangling gulps.

A scanner alarm clanged.

He forced his eyes to focus on the center screen.

"Earthman! Emergency! There has been a flaw discovered in the repair of your ship! Do not blast off! Do not...."

The other image caught him as his arm was in mid-flight toward the control bank. Sweet and warm ... the fertile plains mounting their golden fruits to a mellowed sun, and beyond the distant gently-rolling hills spread the resplendent city, and there were other cities....

But his arm kept going, its muscles loose, and it fell. Heavily. Squarely on the stud-complex toward which its fist had been aimed a split-second before.

The engines roared, and the ship lurched upward from the red sand.

The command flicked into the Captain's brain like a lash of ice.

"Slaazar! Converge, sheaf!"

"Converging, sir...." It would be no use, of course. If the high brass had been content to rely on the beams rather than on their own subtlety in the first place, the Earthman would never have fallen prey to the Nomads, even for a second. But they had wanted to be as forthright as possible—force, they said, would only arouse suspicion. Psibeam units only as a last resort.... The lowliest Patrol Lancer could have told them the folly of that!

Hastily, Slaazar issued orders to his battery crews tracking the ascending Spaceship, their units already nearing overload potential. But the desert-scum would see some real psi-power now! They'd see it wasted completely if they saw it at all.... Because they'd outmaneuvered the brass again!

"Convergence impossible, sir."

As he had expected.

"Colonel Truul, this is Captain Slaazar. Target has passed critical planetary curvature. Convergence