Over the wind-carved rock, they made good time. Ascent of the long, jagged slopes to the city was heart-killing work, delicate and treacherous. The surface was like sponge-glass, brittle and deadly with knife-edges when broken.
Sheltering from wind-driven sand under the cover of a great monolith, Newlin and Songeen watched the racing figures of pursuit top the crest of the opposite ridge and start down. Man and girl were too winded and weak even to get up. They dared rest only a moment, then plunged on into the maze of tumbled ruins. Ultimate exertion had taken toll of their energies and rapidly burned up air reserves. Both were cruelly thirsty. The heat, even inside their insulated suits, was stifling.
There was no time to take stock of manifold discomforts.
The race was neck and neck. Death sniffed at their heels in the guise of mechanical trackers. On Venus, life is to the swift and cunning. To Newlin, life was perilous, but sweet.
Their helmet microphones picked up and amplified a curious droning buzz. It was the deathsong of the electronic tracker and it seemed closer than it was.
Slowly, inexorably, it grew louder. Sound swelled steadily, and it was a whiplash to their flagging energies. They fled in panic through the streets of the dead city.
It was no real refuge to them, but its megalithic precincts gave some lying illusion of safety. They chose a twisting, tangled route into the very heart of the ruined city, with the instinct of a hunted animal to confuse its trail. They doubled back to cross their own trail twice, in the vain hope of baffling the electronic enemy.
Newlin had been hunted before, on Mars, but by live bloodhounds. Pepper, oil of mustard, and perfumes had saved him then. But this hound followed not scent, but something intangible, electrical, and as mysterious as the soul-aura itself. It sorted two life-complexes from all other impulses and followed its own prime-directive—hunt down and kill.
The end was inevitable as death.