Nor was the trap just imaginary. The most frightening part was knowing that Doran was with child. Damn the pulse-beats of life that had no regard for circumstances!
Joe could be glad only that she remained human enough to be pettish and optimistic by turns.
"We can't get back, can we, Joe?" she'd say. "But maybe it'll be all right. It's a long time, yet."
Should they try to hole up, somewhere? That wasn't much good, either. Even in spring there wouldn't be enough resources in one place to sustain life for long. They had to keep moving. So when again they saw those boot-tracks, they felt free to follow.
Milder days came. At noon the temperature reached fifty degrees F. The country brightened in pastel beauty after the vernal storms. There were gorgeous flowerlike growths. The tracks would vanish and appear again, seeming to mark no single trail but a series of excursions from somewhere among the hills to the south.
Once Doran and Joe heard a thin halloo or scream of defiance.
One of their two air-compressors quit beyond repair, making it twice the job to fill their oxygen flasks. This could be fatal, now.
Soon after they entered the hill-gorges there was a rock-fall, too close to be a thing of accident or coincidence. Later there was a swift-dying flicker that turned a spot of dust incandescent.
Later that afternoon, amid blue shadows from towering monoliths, Joe met an attack as sudden and savage as a bobcat's. The creature sprang down at him from a ledge, clawing, kicking, striking with a knife. Joe had a bad time until his greater strength won.