Part 1 (2/2)
”Did you maybe try vas.h.i.+ng der combustion chamber mit acid sulphuric?”
inquired Putz. ”Sometimes der lead giffs a secondary radiation--”
”Naw!” said Jarvis disgustedly. ”I wouldn't try that, of course--not more than ten times! Besides, the b.u.mp flattened the landing gear and busted off the under-jets. Suppose I got the thing working--what then?
Ten miles with the blast coming right out of the bottom and I'd have melted the floor from under me!” He rubbed his nose again. ”Lucky for me a pound only weighs seven ounces here, or I'd have been mashed flat!”
”I could have fixed!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the engineer. ”I bet it vas not serious.”
”Probably not,” agreed Jarvis sarcastically. ”Only it wouldn't fly.
Nothing serious, but I had my choice of waiting to be picked up or trying to walk back--eight hundred miles, and perhaps twenty days before we had to leave! Forty miles a day! Well,” he concluded, ”I chose to walk. Just as much chance of being picked up, and it kept me busy.”
”We'd have found you,” said Harrison.
”No doubt. Anyway, I rigged up a harness from some seat straps, and put the water tank on my back, took a cartridge belt and revolver, and some iron rations, and started out.”
”Water tank!” exclaimed the little biologist, Leroy. ”She weigh one-quarter ton!”
”Wasn't full. Weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds earth-weight, which is eighty-five here. Then, besides, my own personal two hundred and ten pounds is only seventy on Mars, so, tank and all, I grossed a hundred and fifty-five, or fifty-five pounds less than my everyday earth-weight. I figured on that when I undertook the forty-mile daily stroll. Oh--of course I took a thermo-skin sleeping bag for these wintry Martian nights.
”Off I went, bouncing along pretty quickly. Eight hours of daylight meant twenty miles or more. It got tiresome, of course--plugging along over a soft sand desert with nothing to see, not even Leroy's crawling biopods. But an hour or so brought me to the ca.n.a.l--just a dry ditch about four hundred feet wide, and straight as a railroad on its own company map.
”There'd been water in it sometime, though. The ditch was covered with what looked like a nice green lawn. Only, as I approached, the lawn moved out of my way!”
”Eh?” said Leroy.
”Yeah, it was a relative of your biopods. I caught one--a little gra.s.s-like blade about as long as my finger, with two thin, stemmy legs.”
”He is where?” Leroy was eager.
”He is let go! I had to move, so I plowed along with the walking gra.s.s opening in front and closing behind. And then I was out on the orange desert of Thyle again.
”I plugged steadily along, cussing the sand that made going so tiresome, and, incidentally, cussing that cranky motor of yours, Karl. It was just before twilight that I reached the edge of Thyle, and looked down over the gray Mare Chronium. And I knew there was seventy-five miles of _that_ to be walked over, and then a couple of hundred miles of that Xanthus desert, and about as much more Mare Cimmerium. Was I pleased? I started cussing you fellows for not picking me up!”
”We were trying, you sap!” said Harrison.
”That didn't help. Well, I figured I might as well use what was left of daylight in getting down the cliff that bounded Thyle. I found an easy place, and down I went. Mare Chronium was just the same sort of place as this--crazy leafless plants and a bunch of crawlers; I gave it a glance and hauled out my sleeping bag. Up to that time, you know, I hadn't seen anything worth worrying about on this half-dead world--nothing dangerous, that is.”
”Did you?” queried Harrison.
”_Did I!_ You'll hear about it when I come to it. Well, I was just about to turn in when suddenly I heard the wildest sort of shenanigans!”
”Vot iss shenanigans?” inquired Putz.
”He says, 'Je ne sais quoi,'” explained Leroy. ”It is to say, 'I don't know what.'”
”That's right,” agreed Jarvis. ”I didn't know what, so I sneaked over to find out. There was a racket like a flock of crows eating a bunch of canaries--whistles, cackles, caws, trills, and what have you. I rounded a clump of stumps, and there was Tweel!”
”Tweel?” said Harrison, and ”Tveel?” said Leroy and Putz.
<script>