They'd interpreted our cries of relief as battle cries.
Without removing my helmet, I put the car into high speed, away from
the advancing Martians, and headed northward. The desert lay ahead of
us, rolling and vacant, its wide expanse broken only by outcroppings
of smooth rocks. I advanced the throttle till the car was traveling as
fast as it would go. But as I worked up to that speed, the Martians had
gained a little. Now they galloped in pursuit like race horses, except
that they were faster than any Derby winner I ever saw. The gravity had
something to do with that.
But it wasn't fast enough to catch us, although I knew now that the
Martians Spartan had shot hadn't been really pursuing me. They'd been
loping along, believing I was frightened and harmless, and they'd
assumed they had nothing to fear from me. Possibly, if Spartan had not
fired, Mars men and earthmen might have co-existed, in spite of their
basic differences and the fact that they were deadly poison to one
another.