Willis insisted on getting down. First he gave himself a dust bath in the clean sand; thereafter he kept somewhat ahead of Jim, exploring this way and that and startling the spin bugs. Jim had just topped a dune and was starting down the other side when he heard an agonized squeak from Willis. He looked around.
Frank was just coming around the end of the dune and Willis was with him, that is to say, Willis had skittered on ahead. Now the bouncer was standing dead still. Frank apparently had noticed nothing; he was dragging along in a listless fashion, his head down.
Charging straight at them was a water-seeker.
It was a long shot, even for a match marksman. The scene took on a curious unreality to Jim. It seemed as if Frank were frozen in his tracks and as if the water-seeker itself were strolling slowly toward his victims. Jim himself seemed to have all the time in the world to draw, take a steady, careful bead, and let go his first charge.
It burned the first two pairs of legs off the creature; it kept coming.
Jim sighted on it again, held the stud down. His beam, held steadily on the centeriine of the varmit, sliced it in two as if it had run into a buzz saw. It kept coming until its two halves were no longer joined, until they fell two ways, twitching. The great scimitar claw on the left half stopped within inches of Willis.
Jim ran down the dune. Frank, no longer a statue, actually had stopped. He was standing, blinking at what had been a moment before the incarnation of sudden and bloody death. He looked around as Jim came up. "Thanks," he said.
Jim did not answer but kicked at a trembling leg of the beast. "The filthy, filthy thing!" he said intensely. "Cripes, how I hate them. I wish I could burn every one on Mars, all at once." He walked on up along the body, located the egg sac, and carefully blasted every bit of it.
Willis had not moved. He was sobbing quietly. Jim came back, picked him up, and popped him in the travel bag. "Let's stick together from here on," he said. "If you don't feel like climbing, I'll go around."
"Okay."
"Frank!"
"Uh? Yes, what is it, Jim?" Frank's voice was listless.
"What do you see ahead?"
"Ahead?" Frank tried manfully to make his eyes focus, to chase the fuzz from them. "Uhh, it's the canal, the green belt I mean. I guess we made it."
"And what else? Don't you see a tower?"
"What? Where? Oh, thereYes, I guess I do. It's a tower all right."
"Well, for heaven's sake, don't you know what that means? Martians!"
"Yeah, I suppose so."
"Well, show some enthusiasm!"
"Why should I?"
"They'll take us in, man! Martians are good people; you'll have a warm place to rest, before we go on."
Frank looked a bit more interested, but said nothing. "They might even know Gekko," Jim went on. "This is a real break."
"Yeah, maybe so."
It took another hour of foot-slogging before the little Martian town was reached. It was so small that it boasted only one tower, but to Jim it was even more beautiful than Syrtis Major. They followed its wall and presently found a gate.
They had not been inside more than a few minutes when Jim's hopes, so high, were almost as low as they could be. Even before he saw the weed-choked central garden, the empty walks and silent courts had told him the bad truth: the little town was deserted.
Mars must once have held a larger native population than it does today. Ghost cities are not unknown and even the greater centers of population, such as Charax, Syrtis Major and Minor, and Hesperidum, have areas which are no longer used and through which tourists from Earth may sometimes be conducted. This little town, apparently never of great importance, might have been abandoned before Noah laid the keel of his ship.
Jim paused in the plaza, unwilling to speak. Frank stopped and sat down a metal slab, its burnished face bright with characters that an Earthly scholar would have given an arm to read. "Well," said Jim, "rest a bit, then I guess we had better find a way to get down onto the canal."
Frank answered dully, "Not for me. I've come as far as I can."
"Don't talk that way."
"I'm telling you, Jim, that's how it is."
Jim puzzled at it. "I tell you what-I'll search around. These places are always honeycombed underneath. I'll find a place for us to hole up over night."
"Just as you like."
"You just stay here." He started to leave, then suddenly became aware that Willis was not with him. He then recalled that the bouncer had jumped down when they entred the city. "Willis-where's Willis?"
"How would I know?"
"I've got to find him. Oh, Willis! Hey, Willis! Come, boy!" His voice echoed around the dead square.
"Hi, Jim!"
It was Willis, rightly enough, his voice reaching Jim from some distance. Presently he came into sight. But he was not alone; he was being carried by a Martian.
The Martian came near them, dropped his third leg, and leaned down. His voice boomed gently at Jim. "What's he saying, Frank?"
"Huh? Oh, I don't know. Tell him to go away."
The Martian spoke again. Jim abandoned the attempt to use Frank as a translator and concentrated on trying to understand. He spotted the question symbol, in the inverted position; the remark was an invitation or a suggestion of some sort. Following it was the operator of motion coupled with some radical that meant nothing to Jim.
He answered it with the question symbol alone, hoping that the native would repeat himself. Willis answered instead. "Come along, Jim boy-fine place!"
Why not? he said to himself and answered, "Okay, Willis." To the Martian he replied with the symbol of general assent, racking his throat to produce the unEarthly triple guttural required. The Martian repeated it, inverted, then picked up the leg closest to them and walked rapidly away without turning around. He had gone about twenty-five yards when he seemed to notice that he was not being followed. He backed up just as rapidly and used the general inquiry symbol in the sense of "What's wrong?"
"Willis," Jim said urgently, "I want him to carry Frank."
"Cany Frank boy?"
"Yes, the way Gekko carried him."
"Gekko not here. This K'boomch."
"His name is K'boomk?"
"Sure-K'boomch," Willis agreed, correcting Jim's pronunciation.
"Well, I want K'boomch to carry Frank like Gekko carried him."
Willis and the Martian mooed and croaked at each other for a moment, then Willis said, "K'boomch wants to know does Jim boy know Gekko."
"Tell him we are friends, water friends."
"Willis already tell him."
"How about Frank?" But it appeared that Willis had already told his new acquaintance about that, too, for K'boomch enlosed Frank in two palm flaps and lifted him up. Frank opened his eyes, then closed them. He seemed indifferent to what happened to him.
Jim trotted after the Martian, stopping only to grab up Frank's skates from where he had abandoned them on the metal slab. The Martian led him into a huge building that seemed even larger inside than out, so richly illuminated in glowing lights were the walls. The Martian did not tarry but went directly into an archway in the far wall; it was a ramp tunnel entrance, leading down.
The Martians appear never to have invented stair steps, or more likely never needed them. The low surface gravity of Mars, only 38% of that of Earth, permits the use of ramps which would be disastrously steep on Earth. The Martian led Jim down a long sequence of these rapid descents.
Presently Jim discovered, as he had once before under Cynia city, that the air pressure had increased. He raised his mask with a feeling of great relief; he had not had it off for more than twenty-four hours. The change in pressure had come abruptly; he knew from this that it had not resulted from descent alone, nor had they come deep enough to make any great difference in pressure.