"I don't understand you, Gray. You wouldn't risk my life. Yet you're turning me loose, knowing that I might save you, knowing that I'll hunt you down if I can. I thought you were a hardened cynic."
"What makes you think I'm not?"
"If you were, you'd have kicked me out the waste tubs of the ship and gone on. You'd never have turned back."
"I told you," he said roughly, "I don't kill women." He turned away, but her harsh chuckle followed him.
"You're a fool, Gray. You've lost truth—and you aren't even true to your lie."
He paused, in swift anger. Voices the sound of running men, came up from the path. He broke into a silent run, following the dying echoes of Caron's men.
"Run, Gray!" cried Jill. "Because we're coming after you!"
The tunnels, ancient blowholes for the volcanic gases that had tortured Mercury with the raising of the titanic mountains, sprawled in a labyrinthine network through those same vast peaks. Only the galleries lying next the valleys had been explored. Man's habitation on Mercury had been too short.
Gray could hear Caron's men circling about through connecting tunnels, searching. It proved what he had already guessed. He was taking a desperate chance. But the way back was closed—and he was used to taking chances.
The geography of the district was clear in his mind—the valley he had just left and the main valley, forming an obtuse angle with the apex out on the wind-torn plain and a double range of mountains lying out between the sides of the triangle.