Bill clutched his sleeve. "Wait! Think what you're doing, man! We're fighting to save the world. You can't run off that way! Anyhow, the sun is low. It is getting cool already. In two minutes after the sun goes down it will be cold as the devil! You'll die in the desert!"
The Prince tugged away. "Hang the world! If you knew the way I feel about Paula—Lord, what a fool I've been! To drive her to this!"
Agony was written on his dark face; he bit his thin lip until blood oozed out and mingled indistinguishably with the red grime on his face. "Anyhow, the vitomaton is finished. Trainor can use it as well as I. I've got to find Paula—or die trying."
He started toward the brink of the precipice again. After the hesitation of a moment, Bill started after him. The Prince turned suddenly.
"What the devil are you doing here?"
"Well," said Bill, "the Red Rover is not a very attractive haven of refuge, with all those Martian ships flying around it. And I have come to think a good deal of Miss Paula. I'd like to help you find her."
"Don't come," said the Prince. "Probably it is death—"
"I'm not exactly an infant. I've been in tight places before, I've even an idea of what it would be like to die at night in this desert—I found the bones of a man in the dust today. But I want to go."
The Prince grasped Bill's hand. For a moment a tender smile of friendship came over the drawn mask of mingled despair and determination upon his lean face.
Presently the two of them found an inclining ledge that ran down the face of the red granite cliff, and scrambled along to the flat plain of acrid dust below. In desperate haste they plodded gasping along, following the scant traces of Paula's foot-prints that the storm had left. A hazy red cloud of dust rose about them, stinging their nostrils. They strangled and gasped for breath in the thin, dusty air. Sweaty grime covered them with a red crust.