Tex's throat burned, but he was afraid to drink. If the water
evaporated in his mouth as it had in Kuna's....
He had to try. Not knowing was worse than knowing. A second later he
stood with an empty cup in his hand, fighting down panic.
Half the water had vanished before he got the cup to his mouth. The
rest never touched his tongue. Yet there was nothing to see, nothing to
feel. Nothing but dryness.
He turned and ran for Captain Smith's quarters.
Hertford's _Jungles of Jupiter_, the most comprehensive work on a
subject still almost unknown, lay between Kelland's _Field Tactics_
and _Alice in Wonderland_. Tex took it down, leafing through it as he
climbed to the parapet.
"Here it is," he said suddenly. "'Dry Spots. These are fairly common
phenomena in certain parts of the swamplands. Seemingly Nature's method
for preserving the free oxygen balance in the atmosphere, colonies of
ultra-microscopic animalcules spring up, spreading apparently from
spores carried by animals which blunder into the dry areas.
"'These animalcules attach themselves to hosts, inanimate or otherwise,
and absorb all water vapor or still water nearby, utilizing the
hydrogen in some way not yet determined, and liberating free oxygen.
They become dormant during the rainy season, apparently unable to cope
with running water. They expand only within definite limits, and the
life of each colony runs about three weeks, after which it vanishes.'"
"The rains start in about a week," said Breska. "Our relief can't
get here under nine days. They can pick us off with snakes and
beetle-bombs, or let us go crazy with thirst, let the first shower
clear out the ani--the whatyoucallits, and move in. Then they can
slaughter our boys when they come up, and have the whole of Jupiter
clear."
Tex told him about Kuna and the beetles. "The snakes probably won't
touch us, either." He pounded a freckled fist on the stones. "If we
could find some way to drink, and if the guns and the net didn't rust,
we might hold them off long enough."
"'If'," grunted Breska. "If we were in heaven, we wouldn't have to
worry."
* * * * *
The days that followed blurred into a daze of thirst and ceaseless
watching. For easier defence, there was only one way down from the
parapet through the net. They took the least rusted of the guns and
filled the small gap. They could hold out there until they collapsed,
or the net gave.
They wasted several quarts of water in vain attempts to drink. Then
they gave it up. The final irony of it made Tex laugh.
"Here we are, being noble till it hurts, and it won't matter a damn.
The Skipper was right. It's the rust that'll lose us Venus in the
end--that, and these Dry Spots."
Food made thirst greater. They stopped eating. They became mere
skeletons, moving feebly in sweat-box heat. Breska stopped coughing.
"It's breathing dry air," he said, in a croaking whisper. "It's so
funny I could laugh."
A scarlet beetle crawled over Tex's face where he lay beside the
Martian on the catwalk. He brushed it off, dragging weak fingers across
his forehead. His skin was dry, but not as dry as he remembered it
after windy days on the prairie.
"Funny it hasn't taken more oil out of my skin." He struggled suddenly
to a sitting position. "Oil! It might work. Oh, God, let it work! It
must!"
Breska stared at him out of sunken eyes as he half fell down the steps.
Then a sound overhead brought the Martian's gaze upward.
"A scout, Tex! They'll attack!"
Tex didn't hear him. His whole being was centered on one thing--the
thing that would mean the difference between life and death.
Dimly, as he staggered into the room where the oil was kept, Tex heard
a growing thunder of wings. He groaned. If Breska could only hold out
for a moment.
It took all his strength to turn the spigot of the oil drum. It was
empty. All the stuff had been used to burn bodies. Almost crying, Tex
crawled to the next one, and the next. It was the fourth drum that
yielded black, viscous fluid.
Forcing stiff lips apart, Tex drank.
If there'd been anything in him, he'd have vomited. The vile stuff
coated lips, tongue, throat. Outside, Breska's gun cut in sharply. Tex
dragged himself to the water tank.
"Running water," he thought. Tilting his head up under the spigot,
he turned the tap. Water splashed out. Some of it hit his skin and
vanished. But the rest ran down his oil-filmed throat. He felt it, warm
and brackish and wonderful, in his stomach.
He laughed, and let go a cracked rebel yell. Then he turned and lurched
back outside, toward the steps.
The net sagged to the weight of white-haired warriors and roaring
lizards. Breska's gun choked and stammered into silence. Tex groaned in
utter agony.
It was too late. The rust had beaten them.
His freckled, oil-smeared face tightened grimly. Drawing his gun, he
charged the steps.
"Where the hell did you go?" snarled Breska. "The ammo belt jammed." He
grabbed for the other gun set in the narrow gap.
Then it wasn't rust! And Tex realized something else. There were no
rust flakes falling from the net.
Something had stopped the rusting. Before, his physical anguish had
been too great for him to see that the net strands grew no thinner,
the gun-barrels no rustier.
Scraps of the explanation shot through Tex's mind. Breska's cough
stopping because the air was dried before it reached his lungs. Dry
stone. Dry clothing.
Dry metal! The water-eating organisms kept the surface dry. There could
be no rust.
"We've licked 'em, Breska! By God, we've licked 'em!" He shouldered the
Martian out of the way, gripped the triggers of the gun. Shouting over
the din, he told Breska how to drink, sent him lurching down the steps.
He could hold the gap alone for a few minutes.
Looking up, Tex found her, swooping low over the fight, her silver hair
flying in the wind. Tex shouted at her.
"You did it! You outsmarted yourself, lady. You showed us the way!"
Scientists could find out how to harness the Dry Spots to keep off the
rust, and still let the soldiers drink.
And some day the swamps would be drained, and men and women would find
new wealth, new life, new horizons here on Jupiter.
Breska came back, grinning, and fought the jam out of the gun. White
bodies began to pile up, mixed with the saurian carcasses of their
war-dogs. And presently the notes of the war-chief's horn drifted down,
and the attackers faded back into the swamps.
And suddenly, wheeling her mount away from the others, the warrior
woman swooped low over the parapet. Tex held his fire. For a moment he
thought she was going to dash her lizard into them. Then, at the last
second, she pulled him up in a thundering climb.
Her face was a cut-pearl mask of fury, but her pale-green eyes held
doubt, the beginning of an awed fear. Then she was gone, bent low over
her mount, her silver hair hiding her face.
Breska watched her go. "For Mars," he said softly. Then, pounding Tex
on the chest until he winced.
Two voices, cracked, harsh, and unmusical, drifted after the retreating
form of the white-haired war-chief.
"Oh, bury us not on the lone praire-e-e...."