He saw her turn and stare at him. They had come abruptly to the end of the tunnel; the sheen of Saturn-light was on her face, shining in her misted eyes as she regarded him.
"Taking me to earth?" she said uncertainly.
"I sure am. You can't live out your life here, just for a bunch of weird animals."
"But some time you'd bring me back?" she murmured tremulously.
"Sure I would. Got to come anyway to mine the Zolonite."
Here was the clump of rocks where he had been when first he saw Nada. His leaden cylinder was lying here. He stuffed the Zolonite samples carefully into it. Sealed it.
"Now we go down the mountain, Nada, to my ship down there."
A sizzling flash with a tiny crack of thunder interrupted him. The bolt from nearby sizzled over their heads as Morgan, with a sweep of his arm, knocked the girl to the ground and flung himself beside her.
"That's them," he muttered grimly. "Keep down, Nada."
Another bolt cracked with a prismatic shower of sparks on the rocks in front of them. Morgan and the girl were lying in a little depression now, protected by a broken line of rocks with a cliff close behind them. He could see where the pirates were gathered, at the bottom of a small gully some fifty feet away. And then in the silence, an ironic chuckling voice floated over.