You Can't Buy Eternity!

by Dwight V. Swain

The third man: "Well, you can't find him, can you?"

And the second again: "If he played it right, he could have made it, Cheng. After all, he had that column between him and us."

"All right, we'll go on to the next rocks, then. And when we find that chitza—!"

The trio spread out once more—wading through swirling sand, clambering over jagged ledges. Chill menace showed in their stance and movements. They held their blasters at the ready.

Then, reaching the maze-like cluster of monoliths that was their goal, they advanced warily between its towering, weird-etched columns till, one by one, they disappeared from view.

Behind them, sand heaved at the base of the rock pillar that had been their first goal. A figure pushed up out of the drifted grit.

It was the man from the carrier. Shooting quick glances to right and left, he rose cat-like, then paused momentarily while he tapped sand from his breather-mask's filter. He looked better now than he had before his brief respite, and both his nose and the head-gash had stopped bleeding. Close-knit, of medium height, and obviously under thirty, he moved with lithe coordination. Cool intelligence glinted in the grey eyes. His face, though hardly handsome, combined an intriguingly paradoxical mixture of recklessness and control.

Now, as he tapped the filter, light flashed from his wrist. Stopping short, he fumbled off a standard doloid identification bracelet.

But though the picture was his, the name engraved beneath it was Stewart Ross, not Thigpen.

For the fraction of a second, the man hesitated, then dropped the bracelet into the sand and scraped it under with his foot.