Scotty held up his hands in surrender. "Okay. What do we do about it?"
"Let's see where he's going."
"I knew it," Scotty said resignedly. "Okay. But we'd better hurry."
There was a clear view from the front of the hotel down the slopes of the foothills to the town of Calor. The road wound around and occasionally vanished from sight in clumps of green growth, but the boys watched for several minutes and saw no sign of Connel. The jeep with Balgos and the others was rolling along in the distance, but it was still close enough to see three occupants.
"He didn't go to town," Rick said finally, "and there's only one other road out of here."
"To the shot stations," Scotty agreed. "Unless he cut off and headed for San Souci." That was a little fishing village on the west coast. Neither boy had been there, but they had used a flagpole on the tip of the cape near the town as a sighting marker.
"Let's go see," Rick suggested.
They hurried through the hotel to the parking lot and got into the jeep. Rick started the vehicle, crossed the fissure in the lot, and took the road west. According to the map, the road was paved as far as the pumice works. Beyond that it was graded dirt. If Connel had taken the dirt road, instead of the trail to the shot stations, they should see dust.
He kept the jeep rolling at good speed as far as the pumice-works shacks, then stopped to look for signs of a dust haze. There was none. At the end of the blacktop, he and Scotty got out and examined the road surface. There were signs of traffic, but none very recent so far as they could tell. Rick drove the jeep a few hundred yards along the road, then got out and looked again. The heavy treads of his vehicle were clearly visible in the dust. If Connel had gone this way, he would have left similar marks.
"He took the trail," Rick said.