There were men on the deck outside. Carey could hear them scrambling
around and cursing the woman, and someone was saying something about
an Earthman. He rolled out of his bunk. He was still wearing the
Earth-made coverall that was all the clothing he had until Derech
came back. He stripped it off in a wild panic and shoved it far down
under the tumbled furs. Arrin did not scream again but he thought he
could hear muffled sounds as though she was trying to. He shivered,
naked in the chill dark.
Footsteps came light and swift across the deck. Carey reached out and
lifted from its place on the cabin wall a long-handled axe that was
used to cut loose the deck cargo lashings in case of emergency. And as
though the axe had spoken to him, Carey knew what he was going to do.
The shapes of men appeared in the doorway, dark and huddled against the
glow of the deck lights.
Carey gave a Dryland war-cry that split the night. He leaped forward,
swinging the axe.
The men disappeared out of the doorway as though they had been jerked
on strings. Carey emerged from the cabin onto the deck, where the
torchlight showed him clearly, and he whirled the axe around his
head as he had learned to do years ago when he first understood both
the possibility and the immense value of being able to go Martian.
Inevitably he had got himself embroiled in unscholarly, unarcheological
matters like tribal wars and raiding, and he had acquired some odd
skills. Now he drove the dark, small, startled men ahead of the
axe-blade. Yelling, he drove them over the low rail and onto the dock,
and he stood above them in the torchlight while they stared at him,
five astonished men with silver rings in their ears and very sharp
knives in their belts.
Carey quoted some Dryland sayings about Low-Canallers that brought
the blood flushing into their cheeks. Then he asked them what their
business was.
One of them, who wore a kilt of vivid yellow, said, "We were told there
was an Earthman hiding."
And who told you? Carey wondered. Mr. Wales, through some Martian spy?
Of course, Mr. Wales--who else? He was beginning to hate Mr. Wales. But
he laughed and said, "Do I look like an Earthman?"
He made the axe-blade flicker in the light. He had let his hair grow
long and ragged, and it was a good desert color, tawny brown. His naked
body was lean and long-muscled like a desert man's, and he had kept it
hard. Arrin came up to him rubbing her bruised mouth and staring at him
as surprised as the Valkisians.