"Don't shoot! Don't shoot, you idiot!"
"I tell you he was right! It's Mary! The man was right—"
"Don't shoot! That's an order!"
She leaped up, caught the limb. She went on up among the thick sweet concealment of a thousand leaves. She swung into the next tree, then the next, faster and faster she moved. The leaves skimmed past her face.
Her breath came in ecstatic gasps as the light beams faded behind, and the damp dark freedom of the trees spread away in all directions.
She knew which way to go. And she was going there a long time before she even realized the fact. She wondered vaguely for a moment then how it was that she knew where to go, for it was a long way, over the river, and through the hills and the forest.
Guards in helios whirred everywhere in the night clouds. Cars whined through the narrow roads around her. A net formed through the forest. A net of men, guns, lights, cars, helios, and many kinds of detectors.
For what seemed much longer than it was, her strength held.
It enabled her to pierce the net again and again when they were sure she was trapped. She went over it, under it, through it, part of the thick night in the trees and the brush. The river was the worst, for she hated water.