Let's get back to our car while they're still running and we have the chance!" He swung into action.

Collapsing the sight into place, he swung the Rangeley and its tripod mounting over his shoulder. Catching the girl by one hand, he began to run.

To both, the car looked like heaven. It was that, and more. Here in this desert each had found in the other something that he had searched for all his life and had not found. There was heaven in this thought. McLean could hear the girl panting as she ran beside him, but she was also laughing. He began to laugh too, from pure happiness. He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back.

His laughter went into quick silence as he saw the tube of the needle ray gun projecting past the rear tire of the desert car. The bright, baleful eye of a Martian crouching there was visible behind the weapon.

"It's a trap!" he gasped. "They ran on purpose, knowing we would beat it to our car as soon as they were gone."

Skidding to a halt, he tried to bring the Rangeley off his shoulder. The needle ray gun winked at him. He coughed and went down in the sand.

The gun winked again, spitting its bright eye of light at the girl. She went down like a falling doll.

McLean pulled himself up on one knee and one hand. There was a hole in his chest as big as his fist, but there was no pain. The high energy radiation from the needle gun seared the nerve endings so that no sensations were transmitted.

The roustabout shook his fist at the native crouched under the car.

"You got us this time," he yelled. "But we'll be back again. You can't lick us. We'll get you if it takes another million years." The drive that had brought homo sapiens up from the mud flats was in his voice.

His head began to swim. He took another deep breath. Beside him, the girl lay completely silent. Only her eyes showed that she knew what had happened.

McLean looked at her. There was still something that he wanted to say. His mind was fogging and he had difficulty in finding the words.

"The next time through, I want to meet you earlier," he said at last. "I want us to have the chance we missed this trip, of a home and a bunch of—" He coughed. "And a bunch of kids," he ended.

The girl said nothing. She was beyond the ability to speak. But she understood him. The glow that came into her eyes made them as beautiful, and as full of promise, as the skies of Earth.

McLean quietly laid down.

The returning tribesmen danced their wild victory dance around the two humans. Level and bare, the endless sands of Mars stretched far away.