"We've got to get back to the camp," I told her. The audiphone brought her comment:
"Perhaps he has gone."
ut he had not. We saw him again, out in a distant patch of Earthlight. He was further from us than before, but on still higher ground. We had extinguished our small helmet-lights. But he knew we were here, and possibly he could see us. His projector flashed again. But we had again shifted, and were untouched. He was a hundred feet or more away now. His weapon was of longer range than mine. I did not answer his fire, for I could not hope to hit him at such a distance, and the flash of my weapon would help him with his aim.
I murmured to Anita, "We must get out of here."
Yet how did I dare take Anita from these concealing shadows? Miko could reach us so easily as we bounded away, in plain view in the Earthlight of the open summit! We were caught, at bay in this little bowl.
The camp from here was not visible. But out through the broken gully, beyond the staircase top, a white beam of light suddenly came up from below.
"Haljan."
It spelled the signal.