At four in the afternoon, the Ganymedan drawed, 'Air's beginning t' thin out, looks like.'
Allen snapped to alertness. The air was foul and humid within. The ventilator behind swished sibilantly between each click and the clicks were spacing themselves further apart. It wouldn't hold out much longer now.
'How much ground have we covered?'
' 'Bout a thaird o' the distance,' was the reply. 'How 'r y' holding out?'
'Well enough,' Allen snapped back. He retired once more into his shell.
Night came and the first brilliant stars of a Martian night peeped out when with a last futile and long-sustained swi-i-is-s-sh, the ventilator died.
'Domn!' said George. 'I can't breathe this soup any longer, anyway. Open the windows.'
The keenly cold Martian wind swept in and with it the last traces of sand. George coughed as he pulled his woolen cap over his ears and turned on the heaters.
'Y' can still taste the grit.'
Allen looked wistfully up into the skies, 'There's Earth -with the moon hanging right onto her tail.'
'Airth?' repeated George with fine contempt. His finger pointed horizonwards, 'There's good old Jupe for y'.'
And throwing back his head, he sang in a full-throated baritone:
When the golden orb o' love Shines down from the skies above, Then my spirit longs to go To that happy land I know, Back f good, old Ganyme-e-e-e-e-ede.'
The last note quavered and broke, and quavered and broke again and still again in an ever increasing rapidity of tempo until its vibrating ululation pierced the air about ear-shatter-ingly.
Allen stared at his brother wide-eyed, 'How did you do that?'
George grinned, 'That's the Gannie quaver. Didn't y' ever hear it before?'
The Earthman shook his head, 'I've heard of it, but that's all.'
The other became a bit more cordial, 'Well, o' course y' can only do it in a thin atmosphere. Y' should hear me on Gannie. I c'd shake y' right off y'r chair when I'm going good. Here! Wait till I gulp down some coffee, and then I'll sing y' vairse twenty-four o' the "Ballad o' Ganymede."'
He took a deep breath:
'There's a fair-haired maid I love
Standing in the light o' Jove And she's waiting there for me-e-e-e-e.
Then-'
Allen grasped him by the arm and shook him. The Gany-medan choked into silence.
'What's the matter?' he asked sharply.
'There was a thumping sound on the roof just a second ago. There's something up there.'
George stared upwards, 'Grab the wheel. I'll go up.' Allen shook his head, 'I'm going myself. I wouldn't trust myself running this primitive contraption.'
He was out on the running board the next instant.
'Keep her going,' he shouted, and threw one foot.up onto the roof.
He froze in that position when he became aware of two yellow slits of eyes staring hard into his. It took not more than a second for him to realize that he was face to face with a keazel, a situation which for discomfort is about on a par with the discovery of a rattlesnake in one's bed back on Earth.
There was little time for mental comparisons of his position with Earth predicaments, however, for the keazel lunged forward, its poisonous fangs agleam in the starlight.
Allen ducked desperately and lost his grip. He hit the sand with a slow-motion thud and the cold, scaly body of the Martian reptile was upon him.
The Earthman's reaction was almost instinctive. His hand shot out and clamped down hard upon the creature's narrow muzzle.
In that position, beast and man stiffened into breathless statuary. The man was trembling and within him his heart pounded away with hard rapidity. He scarcely dared move. In the unaccustomed Martian gravity, he found he could not judge the movements of his limbs. Muscles knotted almost of their own accord and legs swung when they ought not to.
He tried to lie still - and think.
The keazel squirmed, and from its lips, clamped shut by earth muscles, issued a tremendous whine. Allen's hand grew slick with perspiration and he could feel the beast's muzzle turn a bit within his palm. He clamped harder, panic-stricken. Physically, the keazel was no match for an Earthman, even a tired, frightened, gravity-unaccustomed Earthman - but one bite, anywhere, was all that was needed.
The keazel jerked suddenly; its back humped and its legs threshed. Allen held on with both hands and could not let go. He had neither gun or knife. There was no rock on the level desert sands to crack its skull against. The sand-truck had long since disappeared into the Martian night, and he was alone -alone with a keazel.
In desperation, he twisted. The keazel's head bent. He could hear its breath whistling forth harshly - and again there was that low whine.
Allen writhed above it and clamped knees down upon its cold, scaly abdomen. He twisted the head, further and further. The keazel fought desperately, but Allen's Earthly biceps maintained their hold. He could almost sense the beast's agony in the last stages, when he called up all his strength, - and something snapped.
And the beast lay still.
He rose to his feet, half-sobbing. The Martin night wind knifed into him and the perspiration froze on his body. He was alone in the desert.
Reaction set in. There was an intense buzzing in his ears. He found it difficult to stand. The wind was biting - but somehow he didn't feel it any more.
The buzzing in his ears resolved itself into a voice - a voice calling weirdly through the Martian wind.
'All'n, where are y'? Domn y', y' tanderfoot, where are y'? All'n! All'n!'
New life swept into the Earthman. He tossed the keazel's carcass onto his shoulders and staggered on towards the voice.
'Here I am, G-Gannie. Right here.'
He stumbled blindly into his brother's arms.
George began harshly, 'Y' blasted Airthman, can't y' even keep y'r footing on a sandtruck moving at ten miles per? Y' might've -'
His voice died away in a semi-gurgle.
Allen said tiredly, 'There was a keazel on the roof. He knocked me off. Here, put it somewhere. There's a hundred dollar bonus for every keazel skin brought in to Aresopolis.'
He had no clear recollection of anything for the next half hour. When things straightened out, he was in the truck again with the taste of warm coffee in his mouth. The engine was rumbling once more and the pleasant warmth of the heaters surrounded him.
George sat next to him silently, eyes fixed on the desert ahead. But once in a while, he cleared his throat and shot a lightning glance at his brother. There was a queer look in his eyes.
Allen said, 'Listen, I've got to keep awake - and you look half dead yourself - so how about teaching me that "Gannie quaver" of yours. That's bound to wake the dead.'
The Ganymedan stared even harder and then said gruffly, 'Sure, watch m' Adam's apple while I do 't again.'
The sun was half-way to zenith when they reached the canal.
An hour before dawn there had come the crackling sound of hoarfrost beneath the heavy wheels and that signified the end of the desert area and the approach of the canal oasis. With the rising of the sun, the crackling disappeared and the softening mud underneath slowed the sand-adapted truck. The pathetic clumps of gray-green scrub that dotted the flat landscape were the first variant to eternal red sand since the two had started on their journey.
And then Allen had learned forward and grasped his brother by the arm, 'Look, there's the canal itself right ahead.'
The 'canal' - a small tributary of the mighty Jefferson Canal - contained a mere trickle of water at this season of the year. A dirty winding line of dampness, it was, and little more. Surrounding it on both sides were the boggy areas of black mud that were to fill up into a rushing ice-cold current an Earth-year hence.
The sand-truck nosed gingerly down the gentle slope, weaving a tortuous path among the sparsely-strewn boulders brought down by the spring's torrents and left there as the sinking waters receded.