Her sobbing died away to a muffled sniffling as he pulled her along relentlessly after him. They were far enough from the settlement so her scream wouldn't carry. Their feet crunched on the sand, though the sound was thin and wispy, the ghost of the sound of earth feet trodding earth sand. Brace noted a vague yellowness before him in the sky. It would be getting light soon. He had to get to his ship. The S.P. might already be nosing around.
The lightness was more distinct when they reached the place where the ghostly hulks of space craft lay like sleeping whales, inert leviathans that could in an instant become flaming dragons, leaping and screaming into the darkness. Brace threaded his way through them until he caught a glimpse of his own scarred ship, neither larger nor smaller than the average, its blunt nose pointing slightly away to his left. He stopped suddenly when he saw a shadowy figure standing near it.
"If you scream now—" Abruptly, he made a short, chopping motion with his fist and the girl slumped unconscious. He shouldered her and began a careful approach. There was still a hundred feet to cover, the sky was growing lighter every minute, but the shadowy figure by his ship remained motionless.
Brace stood in the shadow of the fin of a neighboring ship and turned plans over in his mind. It was no use. During that whole hundred feet he would be outlined against the sky. Then a sound tensed him, the whine of a sand car behind him. He crouched low, prepared to duck. This was it. Nobody on Titan had sand cars but the S.P. The miners used big ato-tractors.
Brace lunged around the edge of the fin to shield himself from the oncoming lights. The sand car whizzed past him and hissed to a smooth stop.
They had seen him. Brace spun and ran, sand spurting behind him. He skidded under the huge belly of one ship, scrambled across to another—
Something crackled in the air—dust motes or insects caught in the S.P. ray—and suddenly-molten sand bubbled and spat behind him.
