"Snow! Darling, are you all right?" I asked, getting groggily to my feet and pressing her hand between both of mine. The fall hadn't been as bad as the one I'd taken earlier through that hole in the floor, but it was enough to shake me up.

"Y-Yes, I think so, Jery," she said, pressing one slim hand to her forehead, then brushing a wisp of hair back out of her eyes. I took her tightly in my arms and held her.

Only then did I suddenly realize where we were.

The light came from the trylon tip of Clatclit's tail. It reflected in a red glow from the cavern floor, but vanished over our heads into an impenetrable darkness. Beyond Snow, I saw the Space Scouts getting to their feet. The kids were in much better shape than I was. With consistent bad luck, I'd taken the fall on my injured left arm, and now it was throbbing like crazy. Ted came rushing over to us.

Then I remembered Baxter and looked swiftly about. He was nowhere to be seen. "Clatclit!" I shouted.

My crystalline buddy came hurrying over to me, his little taillight bobbing as he ran. His glittering eyes looked a question at me.

"What happened to Baxter?" I said.

Clatclit pointed off into the darkness, and made that serpentine movement with his hand.

"Into the labyrinth?" I exclaimed. "But why?"

Clatclit pointed toward the floor. I followed his gesture with my eyes, and saw on the rocky ground the reason. The collapser lay there, its firing chamber cracked in half. It was useless as a coercion any more, unless Baxter had a good throwing arm.

"But why didn't you follow him?" I asked.

Disgusted stare. Clatclit pointed to me, Snow, and then the boys, and followed with an attention-getting tremor of his tail.

"Oh, yeah. We would have trouble getting out of here unguided, at that!" I said sheepishly. When Snow was around, I couldn't even see the obvious.

"Any chance Baxter can find his way out of here alone?" I said. "If he gets to the spaceport before we do, he may get back to Earth and get an army back here after us."

Clatclit thought it over. Then he placed an arm across my shoulders, and an arm across Snow's, and looked hopeful.

"Damn," I said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, "it's mighty nice of you to offer, but we can't spend the rest of our lives down here with you, Clatclit!" I shook my head. "We've got to get out of here and get the word to the World Congress before Baxter sews the Earth up tight."

"Say," Ted's small voice interrupted, "what happened to the bars and stuff, hey?"

I blinked, startled, and looked about us. Then, on an impulse, I dropped to my knees and felt the ground. It was plain old lava. I rocked back on my heels, bewildered, and then I understood, and started laughing.

"Jery, what is it?"

"Snow, baby, it's the laugh of the century, that's all. Unstable is hardly the word for the Ancients' universe! Not only did they dislocate, but they took their contact-material with them! MY guess is that right now there is no longer a splinter of parabolite in the solar system."

"But why is that funny?" she asked, as I got to my feet again.

"Because, honey, it means that all Baxter's deep, dire and devious schemes have come to naught, and by his own hand, at that! He'll never build his teleportation machine, now!"

"His what?" she said.

"You see, baby, he—Oh, hell, it's a long story. I'll tell you when we have more time. Right now, we have to head Baxter off, or things won't be very funny at all."

Following Clatclit's light, Snow, the boys and I moved swiftly across the floor of that vast cavern, emptied of its space-stressed metal lining and occupants after heaven knows how many eons of existence there. The only hitch we encountered in our upward race was that spray-happy torrent which Clatclit couldn't cross without dribbling to death. However, a Space Scout is true, brave, and loyal, and he always carries a rubber poncho inside his travel-kit. It took three of them to swaddle our guide, but, with the assistance of two of the more sure-footed Scouts, I was able to tote him bodily across that perilous bridge, with nothing showing of him but his taillight, and that high in the air, away from most of the eroding spray. Once unwrapped, he took the lead again, tail high. Then, Snow's hand tightly in mine, we all took off like cross-country racers up those winding tunnels of Mars.

We emerged on the hillside overlooking the airstrip, from one of those "Forbidden to Enter" cave mouths, in the bright glow of the sand-converter, towering at the far end of the field. Despite political intrigue, insurrection, and the disappearance of the entire Martian race from the solar system, it stood there on its girder legs, monotonously separating the molecules of ferrous oxide into molten iron and atmosphere.

"Things seem to be quiet at the terminal building," I observed, looking across the field. "I wonder who won the battle?"

"What battle?" said Snow.

"Boy, honey," I kissed her lightly on the forehead, "you are going to take years to bring up to date."

To forestall any more questions, I turned and started off across the landing field, with my alien-plus-female-plus-adolescent group tagging cautiously after me. I was just busy wishing I still had my collapser, when, from a cavemouth to our right, a pallid glow appeared, and then a figure darted out onto the strip, in the glow of the terminal lights.

Baxter! If he got inside first, and IS men were in charge—

But he hadn't seen me yet. I couldn't just hope for a rebel win. I took off like an Olympic sprinter, racing toward that staggering silhouette before me, my hands outstretched in the hopes of throttling him a bit before I turned him over to the World Congress. Unless, of course, the rebels ruled Marsport.

And then one of the more excitable Space Scouts blurted an involuntary, "Get him!"

Baxter whirled, five feet away from my fingertips. His right hand came swinging up toward my face.

And then I was coughing, and sneezing, and waving frantic hands at a blazing something that engulfed my features.

By the time I realized it was only tunnel-fungus, and at the same moment realized how Baxter had lighted his way out, he was on his way into the terminal, his old legs whipping like pistons. Well, he'd be the first to see who'd survived the battle. Clatclit and the others had caught up to me, by then, and we moved in a desperate bunch toward those lighted glass doors, in a last hope of getting our man before our man's men got us.

Any second I expected a cordon of armed guards to come galloping out of there with collapsers ablaze in our direction. Any moment now, we'd all be separated into hot protons and flying clouds of electronic sparks.

I came to a stumbling halt, and ceased all conjecture.

For just inside those glass doors, Chief Philip Baxter was standing with his hands raised over his head, and there were men approaching him with drawn weapons. And not the rebels, either. His own security guards! IS had won.

"Hey!" said Ted, tugging at my arm. "They must have gotten my message! Lucky thing the rebels were the losers, hey?"

I spun about, giving him a dazed look. "What message?" was all I could choke out.

"In the Phobos II," he said happily. "I scratched it on the wall over my takeoff rack."

"I didn't see any message," I complained.

"It was in code," he explained, with the head-shaking condescension toward an idiot of which only small boys are capable. "Snow and me, we have a secret code."

"I know that!" I growled. "But how in the world—"

He gave a lazy what-does-it-matter shrug. "You probably didn't notice it because you didn't know the code. Otherwise, it looks like chicken-scratches. But I was pretty sure a good cryptograph man would figure it out. It's only a substitution code, after all."

"And what was the message?" I said, repressing a sudden urge to swear at him.

Ted yawned idly and scratched his stomach. "I just said: 'Help! We have been kidnapped by Chief Baxter of Interplanetary Security. Sincerely yours, Ted White, Space Scout First Class.' It wasn't the truth, of course, but I figured it'd get an investigation started. And then Baxter's goose would be cooked."

Before I could mutter a small curse, there came a sudden blast of energy from the terminal building, and the glass doors came flying open. I saw a figure come dashing out of there, and realized that Baxter was once more on the loose.

"The shield!" I groaned.

His hands-over-the-head had been only a reflex action. I only gave one quick glance toward the terminal lobby, where the remaining men were just getting their wits about them, then I took off after him again.

It was going to be a close thing, I realized. He had a good lead on me. At the end of the strip opposite to where we'd emerged from the labyrinth stood a ship. It was Baxter's personal ship, marked with the colors and seal of IS. If he once got aboard, he could get away forever. But even worse, he could train his ship's artillery-size collapser on the entire spaceport, and blast us all out of existence.

I could see I wasn't going to make it. He was a full hundred yards ahead of me. By the time I reached the ship, he'd be pressing the starter button, and all I'd get for my efforts would be the searing fires of the rockets in my face as the great ship lifted.

Then a bounding, red-glinting form was whizzing past me, covering thirty feet at a leap. Clatclit was on the trail of the man who had threatened his destruction back in the labyrinth.

Shrill, furious clackings came from within those sharp-fanged jaws as the sugarfoot rapidly closed the gap between himself and the man.

And still, something kept me racing across that field, some subconscious foreboding that things weren't finished yet. Then Baxter came to a halt, still twenty yards from the ship, and turned about, something in his hand from the ship-readying cart. The hose for the water tanks!

"Clatclit!" I yelled frantically.

As if not realizing his danger, the hurtling form of my alien friend zoomed down toward Baxter, powerful claws held wide for grasping his enemy.

Things happened terribly fast. From behind me, I heard a scream, and then a curse. I staggered, and turned. Snow was wrestling on the ground with a Security Agent, one of the still-shaken survivors of the backlash of Baxter's shield. Evidently, he'd been about to try another shot at the fleeing Security Chief, and Snow, with unladylike good sense, had given him the benefit of one of her brother-training flying tackles, before we all died in a new rebounding ray.

A wild trilling whistle came from the ship, and I jerked my head about. Baxter had let loose with the hose, and Clatclit was rolling on the ground, in a wild effort to shake the caustic droplets from his melting scales.

My head was spinning. Which was to turn? Snow was in a furious fight with a full-grown man behind me, and my best friend was being dissolved before me. I didn't know what to do. Should I run and stop her from being vaporized, or him from being turned into taffy?

Baxter took the decision out of my hands.

"Delvin!" his voice came.

I turned back toward him. Clatclit, still shuddering with the shock of that water-spray, was facing me, Baxter behind him with an arm across the sugarfoot's throat. And in Baxter's other hand he held the water hose, its pistol-control barrel aimed right at Clatclit's eyes.

"Tell the others to stand back," he shouted, "or I'll burn your friend's eyes out!"

By now, Snow had explained the situation somewhat to the guard, I guess, because she and he came abreast of me and stopped, listening to Baxter's threat.

The guard's gun came up swiftly.

"Don't, you fool!" I said, my hand clamping on his wrist. "He's got a shield!"

"I know that," said the guard, whom I suddenly recognized as the corporal who had led his men to investigate the blast in the upper corridor. "I'm only going to disable the ship!"

"No," Baxter called. "If the ship goes, then so do this creature's eyes!"

The corporal looked at me, wavering. "It's—it's only a sugarfoot," he said, uncertainly.

"Only a—!" I shrieked. How could I tell this idiot what I felt for Clatclit! "You'll shoot over my bloody corpse!"

"We can't let Baxter get aloft in that thing!" the corporal said beseechingly. "If he does, we're all dead!"

I was trembling with fear and frustrated rage. Baxter was backing toward the ship, taking the weakened Clatclit backward with him. They were only a few feet from the entry port, now.

Then my hand went out, and I took the corporal's collapser from him. He stared at me confusedly, but let me take it.

"Everybody hit the dirt!" I said, lifting the weapon and taking careful aim. Guard, girl and Scouts took a dive.

I was neither aiming at Baxter, nor his ship. The blazing bolt of energy from the collapser, an instant before I joined Snow, the corporal and the Space Scouts on the ground, went where I'd intended it to.

Into the nearest supporting girder of the massive converter.

As in a slow-motion nightmare, the structure began to tilt with the uneven distribution of weight, toward the spot where a supporting leg should have been, and then the brightly burning rays of the ore-converting head came arcing down in a deadly sweep that passed over Baxter, Clatclit, and the ship, narrowly missing the spot where the rest of us lay. Then the power cables tore away, and the beam went out.

It was all over. The ship, of aluminum-magnesium alloys, was in perfectly fine shape. Clatclit, of pure sugar construction, was, if a bit water-sick, alive and healthy.

But Baxter—

The converter had been designed with one function: to turn ferrous oxide, plain old rusted iron, into its components. In the force of its ray, the oxide became free oxygen and molten iron. And the blood of a human being is made up of, amongst other things, tiny cells which have the presence of oxidized iron to thank for their bright red color.

When we got to Baxter, he was long past screaming. You can't make much noise when you're a solid blister, ten feet in diameter.

"Hey, Jery," said Ted, on the rocket back to Earth. "How come you and Snow fell in love so quick, hey?"

I looked from Snow, seated beside me on the lounge, my arm across her shoulders, to the viewport, through which I could see the dwindling red globe that was Mars.

"Well," I said, trying to think of an answer.

Across from us, squatting happily on a specially provided stool, was Clatclit. As ambassador-elect of the Sugarfoot Nation to Earth, and the first extraterrestrial permitted to land on our home planet, he was mighty proud of his upcoming honor. Clatclit the sugarfoot clacked something.

I looked at him.

He pointed to his wrist and shook his head.

I grinned. "There's your answer, Ted. There wasn't time to fall in love slowly."

Ted stared at the carpet and sulked. I had already, in a post-trauma state of nerves, shattered his composure not a little by angrily telling him that his "world-saving" code was really a cipher.

He'd been unwontedly morose ever since. I felt kind of bad about it, but couldn't find an opportunity as yet of getting his ego back on its feet.

Then Clatclit, resplendent in his new-grown ruby scales, made another noise. I looked at him again.

He made a back-over-the-shoulder gesture, then tapped his wrist.

"A while ago ..." I interpreted aloud for Snow's benefit. And Ted's, if he wasn't too sunken in gloom to listen.

He put one hand to his throat, and pointed an index finger at his eyes.

"... When Baxter was holding you as hostage?"

He pointed to me, then made a bang-bang gesture with the finger, followed by a point back over and above his shoulder, toward where that converter had been in relation to himself.

"Why did I blast the converter?"

Nod.

I stared. "What else was there to do? It was a little rough on Baxter, but I had to save you, didn't I?"

Side-to-side headshake.

"I didn't have to save you that way?" I remarked.

Ted was watching Clatclit with interest, I noticed, his eyes dancing with fascination at this better-than-code means of communication.

Clatclit shook his head.

"Okay, I'll bite," I said, puzzled. "What would you have done in my spot?"

Bang-bang gesture. Then serpentine motion with his hand.

"Shot the ... the lava tunnels?"

Disgusted stare.

"Threw a snake at him?" I hazarded, bewildered.

Abruptly, Ted laughed. I looked at him, chagrined. After all, he couldn't expect me to be at my brightest in the mind-dampening presence of his sister, though he was a little young to understand such things.

"I suppose you know what he means!" I said.

Ted continued to laugh, a high boy-soprano giggle which seemed in itself to afford him additional amusement.

"Okay, okay," I said to him. "Give. What did Clatclit say I could have done that would have spared Baxter and saved him from dissolving anyhow?"

Ted managed to squeak out, between gusts of delight, "Clatclit says that if he had been doing the shooting, he would just have disintegrated ..." He rolled onto his face on the lounge sofa, and couldn't go on.

"Disintegrated what?" I demanded, baffled.

Ted snorted, lifting his face to look for the reaction on mine. "The water hose!"

I stared stupidly, then broke into a grin.

I decided not to mention to him that a foot-thick metal girder is a hell of an easier target than a one-inch diameter of flexible tubing. What the hell. I had Snow; Clatclit had a whole skin; and—Well, growing boys need their ego.