He stretched himself to the limit of his tether, bound leg straight out behind him, and managed to touch her shoulder. "Ellie?"
She shook off his hand. "Keep your distance! You smell like an old goat."
"Well," he said reasonably, "you're no lily yourself. You haven't had a bath lately either."
"I know it!" she snapped, and started to sob. "And I hate it. I just ... h- h- _hate_ it. I look _awful_."
"No, you don't. Not to. me."
She turned a tear-wet and very dirty face. "Liar."
"Nothing wrong that some soap and water won't fix."
"Oh, if only I had some." She looked at him. "You aren't at your best yourself, Mr. Jones. You need a haircut and the way your beard grows in patches is ghastly."
He fingered the untidy stubble on his chin. "I can't help it."
"Neither can I." She sighed. "Set up the boards again."
Thereafter she beat him three straight games, one with a disgraceful idiot's mate. He looked at the boards sadly when it was over. "And you are the girl who flunked improper fractions?"
"Mr. Jones, has it ever occurred to you, the world being what it is, that women sometimes prefer not to appear too bright?" He was digesting this when she added, "I learned this game at my father's knee, before I learned to read. I was junior champion of Hespera before I got shanghaied. Stop by sometime and I'll show you my cup."
"Is that true? Really?"
"I'd rather play than eat--when I can find competition. But you're learning. Someday you'll be able to give me a good game."
"I guess I don't understand women."
"That's an understatement."
Max was a long time getting to sleep that night. Long after Eldreth was gently snoring he was still staring at the shining tail of the big comet, watching the shooting star trails, and thinking. None of his thoughts was pleasant.
Their position was hopeless, he admitted. Even though Chipsie had failed (he had never pinned much hope on her), searching parties should have found them by now. There was no longer any reason to think that they would be rescued.
And now Ellie was openly contemptuous of him. He had managed to hurt her pride again--again with his big, loose, flapping jaw! Why, he should have told her that she was the prettiest thing this side of paradise, if it would make her feel good--she had mighty little to feel good about these days!
Being captive had been tolerable because of her, he admitted--now he had nothing to look forward to but day after day of losing at three-dee while Ellie grimly proved that girls were as good as men and better. At the end of it they would wind up as an item in the diet of a thing that should never have been born.
If only Dr. Hendrix hadn't died!
If only he had been firm with Ellie when it mattered.
To top it off, and at the moment almost the worst of all, he felt that if he ate just one more of those blasted pawpaws it would gag him.
He was awakened by a hand on his shoulder and a whisper in his ear. "Max!"
"What the--?"
"_Quiet!_ Not a sound."
It was Sam crouching over him--Sam!
As he sat up, sleep jarred out of him by adrenalin shock, he saw Sam move noiselessly to where Ellie slept. He squatted over her but did not touch her. "Miss Eldreth," he said softly.
Ellie's eyes opened and stared. She opened her mouth, Max was terrified that she might cry out. Sam hastily signed for silence; she looked at him and nodded. Sam knelt over her, seemed to study something in the shadow-laced moonlight, then took out a hand gun. There was the briefest of low-energy discharges, entirely silent, and Ellie stood up--free. Sam returned to Max. "Hold still," he whispered. "I don't want to burn you." He knelt over Max's bound ankle.
When the gun flared Max felt an almost paralyzing constriction around his ankle, then the thing fell off. The amputated major part contracted and jerked away into the shadows. Max stood up. "How--"
"Not a word. Follow me." Sam led off into the bushes with Ellie behind him and Max following closely. They had gone only twenty yards when there was a whimpering cry of "Ellie!" and the spider puppy landed in Eldreth's arms. Sam turned suddenly.
"Keep her quiet," he whispered, "for your life."
Ellie nodded and started petting the little creature, crooning to it voicelessly. When Chipsie tried to talk, she silenced it, then stuffed it inside her shirt. Sam waited these few moments, now started on without speaking.
They proceeded for several hundred yards as near silently as three people who believe their lives hang on it can manage. Finally Sam stopped. "This is as far as we dare go," he said in a low voice. "Any farther in the dark and I'd be lost. But I'm pretty sure we are outside their sleeping grounds. We'll start again at the first light."
"How did you get here in the dark, then?"
"I didn't. Chips and I have been hiding in thick bushes since midafternoon, not fifty feet from you."
"Oh." Max looked around, looked up at the stars. "I can take us back in the dark."
"You can? It 'ud be a darn good thing. These babies don't stir out at night--I think."
"Let me get in the lead. You get behind Ellie."
It took more than an hour to get to the edge of the tableland. The darkness, the undergrowth, the need for absolute silence, and the fact that Max had to take it slowly to keep his bearings despite his photographic memory all slowed them down. The trip downhill into the valley was even slower.
When they reached the edge of the trees with comparatively flat grassland in front Sam halted them and surveyed the valley by dim moonlight. "Mustn't get caught in the open," he whispered. "They can't throw those snakes too well among trees, but out in the open--oh, brother!"
"You know about the throwing ropes?"
"Sure."
"Sam," whispered Ellie. "Mr. Anderson, why did ..."
"Sssh!" he cautioned. "Explanations later. Straight across, at a dogtrot. Miss Eldreth, you set the pace. Max, pick your bearings and guide us. We'll run side by side. All set?"
"Just a minute." Max took the spider puppy from Eldreth, zipping it inside his shirt as she had done. Mr. Chips did not even wake up, but moaned softly like a disturbed baby. "Okay."
They ran and walked and ran again for a half hour or more, wasting no breath on words, putting everything into gaining distance from the centaur community. Knee-high grass and semi-darkness made the going hard. They were almost to the bottom of the valley and Max was straining to spot the stream when Sam called out, "Down! Down flat!"
Max hit dirt, taking it on his elbows to protect Chips; Ellie flopped beside him. Max turned his head cautiously and whispered, "Centaurs?"
"No. Shut up."
A hobgoblin balloon, moving at night to Max's surprise, was drifting across the valley at an altitude of about a hundred feet. Its course would take it past them, missing them by perhaps a hundred yards. Then it veered and came toward them.
It lost altitude and hovered almost over them. Max saw Sam aim carefully, steadying his pistol with both bands. There was momentarily a faint violet pencil from gun to hobgoblin; the creature burst and fell so close by that Max could smell burned meat. Sam returned his weapon and got to his feet. "One less spy," he said with satisfaction. "Let's get going, kids."
"You think those things spy?"
"'Think'? We know. Those polo ponies have this place _organized_. Pipe down and make miles."
Ellie found the stream by falling into it. They hauled her out and waded across, stopping only to drink. On the other bank Sam said, "Where's your left shoe, Miss Eldreth?"