“Another one,” said Kent.
Something else was moving in the ravine, a figure that glinted in the starlight.
Kent leaned forward, choking back a cry. Then he was on his feet.
“A man,” he shouted. “There’s a man out there!”
Charley’s chair overturned as he leaped up and stared through the quartz.
The space-armored figure was toiling up the slope that led to the igloo. In one hand the man carried a short blast rifle, and as they watched, the two trappers saw him halt and wheel about, the rifle leveled, ready for action, to stare back at the shadows into which the two Hounds had disappeared only a moment before.
A slight movement to the left and behind the man outside caught Kent’s eye and spurred him into action.
He leaped across the igloo and jerked from its rack his quartz-treated space suit, started clambering into it.
“What’s the trouble?” demanded Charley. “What the hell you doin’?”
“There’s an Eater out there,” shouted Kent. “I saw it just a minute ago.”
He snapped down the helmet and reached for his rifle as Charley spun open the inner air-lock port. Swiftly Kent leaped through, heard the inner port being screwed shut as he swung open the outer door.
Cold bit through the suit and into his very bones as he stepped out into the Martian night. With a swift flip he turned on the chemical heat units and felt a glow of warmth sweep over him.
The man in the ravine below was trudging up the path toward the igloo.
Kent shouted at him.
“Come on! Fast as you can!”
The man halted at the shout, stared upward.
“Come on!” screamed Kent.
The spacesuit moved forward.
Kent, racing down the ravine, saw the silica-armored brute that lurched out of the shadows and sped toward the unsuspecting visitor.
Kent’s rifle came to his shoulder. The sights lined on the ugly head of the Eater. His finger depressed the firing mechanism and the gun spat a tight column of destructive blue fire. The blast crumpled the Eater in mid-leap, flung him off his stride and to one side. But it did not kill him. His unlovely body, gleaming like a reddish mirror in the starlight, clawed upon its feet, stood swinging the gigantic head from side to side.
A shrill scream sounded in Kent’s helmet phones, but he was too busy getting the sights of the weapon lined on the Eater again to pay it any attention.
Again the rifle spat and purred, the blue blast-flame impinging squarely on the silica-armored head. Bright sparks flew from the beast’s head and then suddenly the head seemed to dissolve, melting down into a gob of blackened matter that glowed redly in places. The Eater slowly toppled sidewise and skidded ponderously down the slope to come to rest against a crimson boulder.
Kent signaled to the visitor.
“Come on,” he shouted. “Quick about it! There may be more!”
Swiftly the man in the space suit came up the slope toward Kent.
“Thanks,” he said as he drew abreast of the trapper.
“Get going, fellow,” said Kent tersely. “It isn’t safe to be out here at night.”
He fell in behind the visitor as they hurried toward the open port of the airlock.
The visitor lifted the helmet and laid it on the table and in the dim light of the radium bulb Kent saw the face of a woman.
He stood silent, staring. A visit by a man to their igloo in this out-of-the way spot would have been unusual enough; that a woman should drop in on them seemed almost incredible.
“A woman,” said Charley. “Dim my sights, it’s a woman.”
“Yes, I’m a woman,” said the visitor, and her tone, while it held a hidden hint of culture, was sharp as a whip. It reminded one of the bite of the wind outside. Her eyebrows were naturally high arched, giving her an air of eternal question and now she fastened that questioning gaze on the old trapper.
“You are Charley Wallace, aren’t you?” she asked.
Charley shifted from one foot to another, uncomfortable under that level stare. “That’s me,” he admitted, “but you have the advantage of me, ma’am.”
She hesitated, as if uncertain what he meant and then she laughed, a laugh that seemed to come from deep in her throat, full and musical. “I’m Ann Smith,” she said.
She watched them, eyes flickering from one to the other, but in them she saw no faintest hint of recognition, no start of surprise at the name.
“They told me at Red Rock I’d find you somewhere in Skeleton Canal,” she explained.
“You was a-lookin’ for us?” asked Charley.
She nodded. “They told me you knew every foot of this country.”
Charley squared his shoulders, pawed at his beard. His eyes gleamed brightly. Here was talk he understood. “I know it as well as anyone,” he admitted.
She wriggled her shoulders free of the spacesuit, let it slide, crumpling to the floor, and stepped out of it. Kent stored his own suit on the rack and, picking the girl’s suit off the floor, placed it beside his own.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Charley, “I’ve roamed these canals for over twenty Martian years and I know ‘em as good as most. I wouldn’t be afraid of gettin’ lost.”
Kent studied their visitor. She was dressed in trim sports attire, faultless in fashion, hinting of expensive shops. Her light brown, almost blond hair, was smartly coiffed.
“But why were you lookin’ for us?” asked Charley.
“I was hoping you would do something for me,” she told him.
“Now,” Charley replied, “I’d be glad to do something for you. Anything I can do.”
Kent, watching her face, thought he saw a flicker of anxiety flit across her features. But she did not hesitate. There was no faltering of words as she spoke.
“You know the way to Mad-Man’s Canal?”
If she had slapped Charley across the face with her gloved hand the expression on his face could not have been more awe-struck and dumfounded.
He started to speak, stuttered, was silent.
“You can’t mean,” said Kent, softly, “that you want us to go into Mad-Man’s Canal.”
She whirled on him and it was as if he were an enemy. Her defenses were up. “That’s exactly what I mean,” she said and again there was that wind-like lash in her voice. “But I don’t want you to go alone. I’ll go with you.”
She walked slowly to one of the two chairs in the igloo, dropped into it, crossed her knees, swung one booted foot impatiently.
In the silence Kent could hear the chuckling of the atmosphere condensers, the faint sputter of the heating grids.
“Ma’am,” said Charley, “you sure must be jokin’. You don’t really mean you want to go into Mad-Man’s?”
She faced him with a level stare. “But I do,” she declared. “I never was more serious in my life. There’s someone there I have to see.”
“Lady,” protested the old trapper, “someone’s been spoofin’ you. There ain’t nobody over in Mad-Man’s. You couldn’t find a canal-man in his right mind who’d go near the place.”
“There is,” she told him. “And probably you’ll laugh at this, too, but I happen to know it to be the truth. The man I want to see is Harry, the Hermit.”
Kent guffawed, softly, little more than a chuckle under his breath. But she heard and came up out of the chair.
“You’re laughing,” she said and the words were an accusation.
“Sit down,” said Kent, “and let me tell you something. Something that no canal-man could admit, but something that every one of them know is the truth.”
Slowly she sat down in the chair. Kent sat easily on the edge of the table.
“There isn’t any such a person as Harry, the Hermit,” he said. “It’s just a myth. Just one of those stories that have grown up among the canal-men. Wild tales that they think up when they sit alone in the desolation of the Martian wilderness. Just figments of imagination they concoct to pass away the time. And then, when they go out with their furs, they tell these stories over the drinks at the trading posts and those they tell them to, tell them to the others—and so the tale is started. It goes from mouth to mouth. It gains strength as it goes, and each man improves upon it just a little, until in a year or two it is a full-blown legend. Something that the canal-men almost believe themselves, but know all the time is just a wild canal-tale.”