What more was there for a fighting man to ask? What better prize for a wanderer to strive for as he carved his way up from the asteroids' bleak want and bondage?
He laughed aloud. His weariness fell away.
Sitting up, turning, he once more gave attention to the swarming scarlet beetles far below him.
Fear of his light-lance was upon them now, it seemed. They hung back, spread out in a menacing arc that centered on his side of the pillar.
Directly below him, Kyla crouched as if frozen, the ray-gun ready in her hand. But as yet the beetles had not come close enough to find her.
Haral shifted.
Like lightning, a Q-ray speared up from an ebon crevice to one side of the shaft.
The range was too great. The beam burned out yards short of Haral. But a flicker of movement betrayed that one of the monster insects now was climbing along the other side. The next ray might strike home.
Again, Haral sought out the Triad, and the great arterial avenue that led to it.
The nearest of the roadways lay within a hundred yards of this column that was his vantage-point. A pylon still thrust its weathered peak skyward on the far side of the thoroughfare.