Robert Heinlein - Red Planet

Jim said, "Look here. Frank, I've got a new plan. I'm going to follow this ditch off to the east until I find some way to get down into it. You're going to go back and give yourself up-"

"No!"

"Wait till I finish! This makes sense. You're too sick to keep going. If you stay out here, you're going to die. You might as well admit it. Somebody's got to get the word to our folks-me. You go back, surrender, and then give them a song and dance about how I went that way-any way but this way. If you make it good, you can stall them and keep them chasing their tails for a full day and give me that much head start. In the mean time you lay around in the scooter, warm and safe, and tonight you're in bed in the infirmary at school. There-doesn't that make sense?"

"No."

"Why not? You're just being stubborn."

"No," repeated Frank, "it's no good. In the first place I won't turn myself over to them. I'd rather die out here-"

"Nuts!"

"Nuts yourself. In the second place, a day's start will do you no good. Once they are sure you aren't where I say you are, they'll just go back to combing the canal, by scooter. They'll pick you up tomorrow."

"But-well, what is the answer then?"

"I don't know, but it's not that." He was seized again by coughing.

Neither one of them said anything for several minutes. At last Jim said, "What kind of a scooter was that?"

"The usual cargo sort, a Hudson Six Hundred I think. Why?"

"Could it turn around on that ice down there?"

Frank looked down into the small canal. Its sides sloped in toward the bottom; the water level was so low that the ice surface was barely twenty feet across. "Not a chance," he answered.

"Then they won't try to search this branch by scooter-at least not in that scooter."

"I'm way ahead of you," put in Frank. "You figure we'll cross to east Strymon and go home that way. But how do you know this cut runs all the way through? You remember the map that well?"

"No, I don't. But there is a good chance it does. If it doesn't, it will run most of the way across and we'll just have to hoof it the rest of the way."

"After we get to the east leg it will still be five hundred miles or so to Charax. This leg has shelters on it, even if we did miss the one last night."

"We've got just as good a chance of finding project shelters on east leg as on west leg," Jim answered. "The Project starts next spring on both sides. I know-Dad's talked about it enough. Anyhow, we can't use this leg any further; they're searching it-so why beat your choppers about it? The real question is: can you skate? If you can't, I still say you ought to surrender."

Frank stood up. "I'll skate," he said grimly. "Come on."

They went boldly along the stone embankment, convinced that their pursuers were still searching the neighborhood of the ramp. They were three or four miles further east when they came to a ramp leading down to the ice. "Shall we chance it?" asked Jim.

"Sure. Even if they send a man in on skates I doubt if he would come this far with no tracks to lead him on. I'm tired of walking." They went down, put on their skates, and started. Most of the kinks from their uncomfortable night had been smoothed out by walking; it felt good to be on the ice again. Jim let Frank set the pace; despite his illness he stroked right into it and pushed the miles behind them.

They had come perhaps forty miles when the banks began to be noticeably lower. Jim, seeing this, got a sick feeling that the little canal was not cross-connecting from west to east leg, but merely a feeder to a low spot in the desert. He kept his suspicion to himself. At the end of the next hour it was no longer necessary to spare his chum; the truth was evident to them both. The banks were now so low that they could see over them and the ice ahead no longer disappeared into the blue sky but dead-ended in some fashion.

They came to the dead end presently, a frozen swamp. The banks were gone; the rough ice spread out in all directions and was bordered in the distance by green plants. Here and there, canal grass, caught by the freeze, stuck up in dead tufts through the ice.

They continued east, skating where they could and picking their way around bits of higher ground. At last Frank said, "All out! End of the line!" and sat down to take off his skates.

"I'm sorry, Frank."

"About what? We'll leg it the rest of the way. It can't be so many miles."

They set out through the surrounding greenery, walking just fast enough to let the plants draw out their way. The vegetation that surrounded the marsh was lower than the canal plants, hardly shoulder high, and showed smaller leaves. After a couple of miles of this they found themselves out on the sand dunes.

The shifting, red, iron-oxide sands made hard walking and me dunes, to be climbed or skirted, made it worse. Jim usually elected to climb them even if Frank went around; he was looking for a dark green line against the horizon that would mark east Strymon. It continued to disappoint him.

Willis insisted on getting down. First he gave himself a dust bath in the clean sand; thereafter he kept somewhat ahead of Jim, exploring this way and that and startling the spin bugs. Jim had just topped a dune and was starting down the other side when he heard an agonized squeak from Willis. He looked around.

Frank was just coming around the end of the dune and Willis was with him, that is to say, Willis had skittered on ahead. Now the bouncer was standing dead still. Frank apparently had noticed nothing; he was dragging along in a listless fashion, his head down.

Charging straight at them was a water-seeker.

It was a long shot, even for a match marksman. The scene took on a curious unreality to Jim. It seemed as if Frank were frozen in his tracks and as if the water-seeker itself were strolling slowly toward his victims. Jim himself seemed to have all the time in the world to draw, take a steady, careful bead, and let go his first charge.

It burned the first two pairs of legs off the creature; it kept coming.

Jim sighted on it again, held the stud down. His beam, held steadily on the centeriine of the varmit, sliced it in two as if it had run into a buzz saw. It kept coming until its two halves were no longer joined, until they fell two ways, twitching. The great scimitar claw on the left half stopped within inches of Willis.

Jim ran down the dune. Frank, no longer a statue, actually had stopped. He was standing, blinking at what had been a moment before the incarnation of sudden and bloody death. He looked around as Jim came up. "Thanks," he said.

Jim did not answer but kicked at a trembling leg of the beast. "The filthy, filthy thing!" he said intensely. "Cripes, how I hate them. I wish I could burn every one on Mars, all at once." He walked on up along the body, located the egg sac, and carefully blasted every bit of it.

Willis had not moved. He was sobbing quietly. Jim came back, picked him up, and popped him in the travel bag. "Let's stick together from here on," he said. "If you don't feel like climbing, I'll go around."

"Okay."

"Frank!"

"Uh? Yes, what is it, Jim?" Frank's voice was listless.

"What do you see ahead?"

"Ahead?" Frank tried manfully to make his eyes focus, to chase the fuzz from them. "Uhh, it's the canal, the green belt I mean. I guess we made it."

"And what else? Don't you see a tower?"

"What? Where? Oh, thereYes, I guess I do. It's a tower all right."

"Well, for heaven's sake, don't you know what that means? Martians!"

"Yeah, I suppose so."

"Well, show some enthusiasm!"

"Why should I?"

"They'll take us in, man! Martians are good people; you'll have a warm place to rest, before we go on."

Frank looked a bit more interested, but said nothing. "They might even know Gekko," Jim went on. "This is a real break."