Duel on Syrtis

Hunting a Martian is illegal now, which is exactly why Riordan wants to do it. A shipping magnate and big-game hunter who has bagged trophies from Mercury to Pluto, he comes to Port Armstrong for the one quarry he has never taken.

The trader Wisby points him toward Kreega, an old feathered warrior living alone in a ruined tower in the Hraefnian Hills, who led raids against the first Earthmen. Riordan rings the hills with radioactive dust and sets out with a rifle, a tracking rockhound and a hunting hawk. Kreega has a stone spear, a tired body and the living desert of Mars, which whispers to him in a language no Earthman understands and may yet decide to fight.