Miraculously Frederix retained consciousness and tore his bruised, throbbing body from the shattered cabin, plunged to the slippery ground and screamed madly, flinging his helmet open:
"Del! Del! Oh, God! Come back!" But the atomics screamed as Andres whirled towards the other Certagarni ship and, embattled, fled into the distances towards Kaa.
He dragged himself weakly from the frozen, broken ice, reeling in dizziness. Blood was spurting from his nostrils, his breath was shot and rasping in the frigid, ozone-tainted atmosphere. Feebly he fumbled for his helmet catch, closing it after an eternity, and collapsed on a nearby hummock, gulping in the oxygen which meant life.
He looked at the crumpled, broken ship. Something man had built, gone the way of all his creations. And why? Because of man's savagery, man's impetuosity, man's searching after the vain chimera of glory—
Rising, he stumbled into the north, towards the Rendezvous and, beyond, Calidao, Onupari, and that upon which the future freedom of Earth depended—the seedrona in the vaults of Jethe.
At length he dropped in utter exhaustion. The noonday sun shone upon his inert body near the foothills of a low-lying mountain range.
Long hours later he awoke, incredibly refreshed, and scrambled upward to the highest summit of the range. A cry of exultation burst from his lips. Before him was a tiny valley on whose farther side clung a huge, rocky pile which only a Martian—or Andres and his kin who had beheld the insane architecture of the hither stars—might call an abode of man.
The Rendezvous—Del Andres' Rendezvous, at last!
III