Lockley hesitated.  “It’s not likely,” he said carefully, “that he was left there injured.  But if you feel that somebody has to make sure, I’ll do it.  For one thing, I can climb faster.  My car is ditched back yonder.  You go and wait by it.  At least it’s farther from the lake and you should be safer there.  I’ll make sure about Vale.”

He explained in detail how she could find the car.  Up this hillside to a slash through the forest for a highway.  Due south from an abandoned bulldozer.  Keep out of sight.  Never show against a skyline.

She swallowed again.  Then she said, “If he needs help, you could—­do more than I can.  But I’ll wait there where the woods begin.  I can hide if I need to, and I—­might be of some use.”

He realized that she deluded herself with the hope that he, Lockley, might bring an injured Vale down the mountainside and that she could be useful then.  He let her.  He went through the camp with her to put her on the right track.  He gave her the pocket radio, so she could listen for news.  When she went on out of sight in brushwood, he turned back toward the mountain on which Vale had occupied an observation post.  It was actually a million-year-old crater wall that he climbed presently.  And he took a considerable chance.  As he climbed, for some time he moved in plain view.  If the crew of the ship in Boulder Lake were watching, they’d see him rather than Jill.  If they took action, it would be against him and not Jill.  Somehow he felt better equipped to defend himself than Jill would be.

He climbed.  Again the world was completely normal, commonplace.  There were mountain peaks on every hand.  Some had been volcanoes originally, some had not.  With each five hundred feet of climbing, he could see still more mountains.  The sky was cloudless now.  He climbed a thousand feet.  Two.  Three.  He could see between peaks for a full thirty miles to the spot where he’d been at daybreak.  But he was making his ascent on the back flank of this particular mountain.  He could not see Boulder Lake from there.  On the other hand, no creature at Boulder Lake should be able to see him.  Only an exploring party which might otherwise sight Jill would be apt to detect him, a slowly moving speck against a mountainside.

He reached the level at which Vale’s post had been assigned.  He moved carefully and cautiously around intervening masses of stone.  The wind blew past him, making humming noises in his ears.  Once he dislodged a small stone and it went bouncing and clattering down the slope he’d climbed.

He saw where Vale could have been as he watched something come down from the sky.  He found Vale’s sleeping bag, and the ashes of his campfire.  Here too was the communicator.  It had been smashed by a huge stone lifted and dropped upon it, but before that it had been moved.  It was not in place on the bench mark from which it could measure inches in a distance of scores of miles.