"Eeeeeeoooooooow!" Astro's bull-like roar shattered the silence of the
desert. "There--up ahead, Tom--Roger--a building!"
Tom and Roger stopped and strained their eyes in the bright sunshine.
"I think you're right," said Tom at last. "But I doubt if anyone's
there. Looks like an abandoned mining shack to me."
"Who wants to stand here and debate the question?" asked Roger, and
started off down the side of the canal at a lope, with Astro and Tom
right behind him.
During the last three days the boys had been living off the contents of
the last remaining food container and the few lichens they found growing
along the canal. Their strength was weakening, but with an abundant
supply of water near at hand and able to combat the sun's heat with
frequent swims, they were still in fair condition.
Tom was the first to reach the building, a one-story structure made of
dried mud from the canal. The shutters and the door had long since been
torn away by countless sandstorms.
The three boys entered the one-room building cautiously. The floor was
covered with sand, and sand was piled in heaping drifts in front of the
open windows and door.
"Nothing--not a thing," said Roger disgustedly. "This place must be at
least a hundred and fifty years old."
"Probably built by a miner," commented Tom.
"What do you mean 'nothing'?" said Astro. "Look!"
They followed Astro's pointing finger to the ceiling. Crisscrossed, from
wall to wall, were heavy wooden beams.
"Raft!" Tom cried.
"That's right, spaceman," said Astro, "a raft. There's enough wood up
there to float the _Polaris_. Come on!"
Astro hurried outside, with Tom and Roger following at his heels. They
quickly climbed to the roof of the old building and soon were ripping
the beams from the crumbling mud. Fortunately the beams had been joined
by notching the ends of the crosspieces. Astro explained that this was
necessary because of the premium on nails when the house was built.
Everything at that time had to be hauled from Earth, and no one wanted
to pay the price heavy nails and bolts demanded.
One by one, they removed the heavy beams, until they had eight of them
lined up alongside the edge of the canal.
"How do we keep them together?" asked Roger.
"With this!" said Tom. He began ripping his space cloth into long
strips. Astro and Roger tugged at the first beam. At last they had it in
the water.
"It floats," cried Astro. Tom and Roger couldn't help but shout for joy.
They quickly hauled the remaining beams into the water and lashed them
together. Without hesitation, they shoved the raft into the canal,
climbing aboard and standing like conquering heroes, as the raft moved
out into the main flow of the canal and began to drift forward.
"I dub thee--_Polaris the Second_," said Tom in formal tones and gave
the nearest beam a kick.
Astro and Roger gave a lusty cheer.
Steadily, silently, the raft bore them through the never-changing scene
of the canal's muddy banks and the endlessness of the desert beyond.
Protecting themselves from the sun during the day by repeated dunkings
in the water, they traveled day and night in a straight course down the
center of the canal. At night, the tiny moon, Deimos, climbed across the
desert and reflected light upon the satin-smooth water.
The third day on the raft they began to feel the pangs of hunger. And
where during their march through the desert, their thoughts were of
water, now visions of endless tables of food occupied their thoughts. At
first, they talked of their hunger, dreaming up wild combinations of
dishes and giving even wilder estimates of how much each could consume.
Finally, discovering that talking about it only intensified their
desire, they kept a stolid silence. When the heat became unbearable,
they simply took to the water. Once Tom's grip on the raft slipped and
Roger plunged in after him without a moment's hesitation, only to have
Astro go in to save both of them.
On and on--down the canal, the three boys floated. Days turned into
nights, and nights, cooling and refreshing, gave way to the blazing sun
of the next day. The silent desert swept past them.
One night, when Astro, unable to sleep, was staring ahead into the
darkness, he heard a rustling in the water alongside the raft. He moved
slowly to the edge of the raft and peered down into the clear water.
He saw a fish!
The big cadet watched it dart around the raft. He waited, his body
tense. Once the fish came to the edge of the raft, but before Astro
could move his arm, it darted off in another direction.
At last the fish disappeared and Astro sank back on the timbers. He
trailed one hand over the side in the water, and suddenly, felt the
rough scales of the fish brush his fingers. In a flash, Astro closed his
hand and snatched the wriggling creature out of the water.
"Tom--Roger--" he shouted. "Look--look--a fish--I caught a fish with my
bare hands!"
Tom rolled over and opened his eyes. Roger sat in bewilderment.
"I watched him--I was watching him and then he went away. And then I
held my hand over the side of the raft and he came snooping around
and--well, I just grabbed him!"
He held the fish in the viselike grip of his right hand until it stopped
moving.
"You know," said Tom weakly, "I just remembered. When we were in the
Science Building in Atom City, one of their projects was to breed both
Earth and Venus fish in the canals."
"I am going to shake, personally, the hand of the man who started this
project when we get back to Atom City," said Astro.
Suddenly Roger gripped Tom's arms. He was staring in the direction the
raft was going. "Tom--" he breathed, "Astro--look!"
They turned and peered into the dusk. In the distance, not a mile away,
was the huge crystal-clear dome of the atmosphere booster station, its
roaring atomic motors sending a steady purring sound out across the
desert.
"We made it," said Tom, choking back the tears. "We made it!"
"Well, blast my jets," said Astro. "We sure did!"
* * * * *
"And you mean to tell me, you _walked_ across that desert?" asked
Captain Strong.
Tom glanced over at Astro and Roger. "We sure did, sir."
"With Astro doing the last stretch to the canal carrying me and dragging
Tom," said Roger as he sipped his hot broth.
The room in the chief engineer's quarters at the atmosphere station was
crowded with workers, enlisted Solar Guardsmen and officers of the Solar
Guard. They stood around staring in disbelief at the three disheveled
cadets.
"But how did you ever survive?" asked Strong. "By the craters of Luna,
that blasted desert was hotter this past month than it has ever been
since Mars was first colonized by Earthmen. Why--why--you were walking
through temperatures that reached a hundred and fifty degrees!"
"You don't have to convince us, sir," said Roger with a smile. "We'll
never forget it as long as we live."
Later, when Tom, Roger and Astro had taken a shower and dressed in fresh
uniforms, Strong came in with an audioscriber and the three cadets gave
the full version of their adventure for the official report back to the
Academy. When they had finished, Strong told them of his efforts to find
them.
"We knew you were in trouble right away," said Strong, "and we tracked
you on radar. But that blasted storm fouled us all up. We figured that
the sand would have covered up the ship, and that the chances of finding
you in a scout were very small, so I got permission from Commander
Walters to organize this ground search for you." He paused. "Frankly we
had just about given up hope. Took us three weeks finally to locate the
section of desert you landed in."
"We knew you would come, sir," said Tom, "but we didn't have enough
water to wait for you--and we had to leave."
"Boys," said Strong slowly, "I've had a lot of wonderful things happen
to me in the Solar Guard. But I have to confess that seeing you three
space-brained idiots clinging to that raft, ready to eat a raw
fish--well, that was just about the happiest moment of my life."
"Thank you, sir," said Roger, "and I think I can speak for Tom and Astro
when I say that seeing you here with over a hundred men, and all this
equipment, ready to start searching for us in that desert--well, it
makes us feel pretty proud to be members of an outfit where the skipper
feels that way about his crew!"
"What happens now, sir?" asked Tom.
"Aside from getting a well-deserved liberty, it's back to the old grind
at the Academy. The _Polaris_ is at the spaceport at Marsopolis, waiting
for us." He paused and eyed the three cadets with a smile. "I guess the
routine at Space Academy will seem a little dull now, after what you've
been through."
"Captain Strong," said Astro formally, "I _know_ I speak for Tom and
Roger when I say that _routine_ is all we want for a long time to come!"
"Amen!" added Tom and Roger in unison.
"Very well," said Strong. "_Polaris_ unit--Staaaaand _TO_!"
The three boys snapped to attention.
"You are hereby ordered to report aboard the _Polaris_ at fifteen
hundred hours and stand by to raise ship!"
He returned their salutes, turned sharply and walked from the room.
Outside, Steve Strong leaned against the wall and stared through the
crystal shell of the atmosphere station into the endless desert.
"Thank you, Mars," he said softly, "for making spacemen out of the
_Polaris_ crew!" He saluted sharply and walked away.
Tom suddenly burst from the room with Roger and Astro yelling after him.
"Hey, Tom, where you going?" yelled Roger.
"I've got to get a bottle of that water out of the canal for my kid
brother Billy!" shouted Tom and disappeared down a slidestairs.
Roger turned to Astro and said, "That's what I call a real spaceman."
"What do you mean?" asked Astro.
"After what we've been through, he still remembers that his kid brother
wants a bottle of water from a canal as a souvenir!"
"Yeah," breathed Astro, "Tom Corbett is--is--a real spaceman!"
[Illustration]
[Illustration]