He chose flight.
IV
he ship dropped short-lived rocket landing flares, circled and came in for a fast landing on the cleared strip of brittle-crusted ash.
Some distance from the hastily-patched and now hastily abandoned mine buildings, Tod Denver and Darbor paused and shot hasty, fearful glances toward the landed ship. By Earthlight, they could distinguish its lines, though not the color. It was a drab shadow now against the vivid grayness of slopes. Figures tiny from distance emerged from it and scattered across the flat and up into the clustered buildings. A few stragglers went over to explore and investigate Denver's space sled in the unlikely possibility that he and the girl had trusted to its meager and dubious protection.
Besides the ship, the hunters would find evidence of recent occupation in the living quarters, from which Denver had removed the frozen corpse before permitting Darbor to assist with the crude remodeling which he had undertaken. Afterward, when the mine buildings and exposed shafts had been turned out on futile quest for the fugitives, the search would spread. Tracks should be simple enough to follow, once located. Denver had anticipated this potential clue to the pursuit, and had kept their walking to the bare, rocky heights of the spur as long as possible.
He hoped to be able to locate the old Martian working, but the chance was slim. Calculating the shadow-apex of Mitre Peak at 2017 ET was complicated by several unknown quantities. Which peak was Mitre Peak? Was that shadow-apex Earth-shadow or Sun-shadow? And had he started out in the correct direction to find the line of deep-cut arrow markings at all?
The first intangible resolved itself. One mitre-shaped peak stood out alone and definite above the sharply defined silhouettes of the mountains. It must be Mitre Peak. It had to be.
The next question was the light source casting the shadow-apex. There were two possible answers. It was possible to estimate the approximate location of either sun or Earth at a given time, but calculations involved in working out too many possibilities on different Earth-days of the Lunar-day made the Earth's shadow-casting the likeliest prospect. Neither location was particularly exact, and probably Laird Martin had expected his directions to be gone into under less harrowing circumstances than those in which Denver now found himself. With time for trial and error one could eventually locate the place.
But Denver was hurried. He trod upon one of the markings while he still sought the elusive shadow apex.