It seemed unbelievable that he should be here, caught in this fantastic thing, running across another world against death. Such things didn’t happen to him. They happened to somebody else. It was always somebody else who ran, and fell, and lay there till he died. For the first time, he had the full chilling awareness of his own mortality.

  Sundown. He got speed on again. The stars burned and blazed overhead. He didn’t recognize most of the constellations, they were the same as on Earth but this was a different latitude. He wished he could see the Great Bear or wintry Orion. It was utterly still, his feet rang loudly on iron-hard ground, the stars glittered enormously quiet. How high they were! The sky seemed infinitely deep and black. It seemed forever since he had walked out with Lois under those high bright suns.

  The cold began to strike in at him. He shivered, but even his running could not keep him warm. To a being with infrared vision, he must have flamed like a torch in that frozen landscape. He turned up his heater a little. The vapors of his body were chokingly thick now, fogging his helmet. If he’d had a dew-bottle along, he could have breathed out into that, trapped the water and drunk it. God, but he needed a drink! As it was, he had to open his valve and let out a puff of air. It rose white, like a small ghost, and disappeared. He was drying out piece by piece, withering by installments.

  No more air. His heart ran wild, and he felt the involuntary panic of it. Hastily, he discarded the one tank and plugged his air hose into the other. He allowed himself the luxury of a long breath before turning down the valve. It was stinging and heady, a clean smell of metal in his nose.

  He was among hills again, low but rugged, steep sides hiding their treacheries in night. If a sharp rock snagged his suit open, well— He took another glance at the stars. The ship ought to be that way. But it would be so easy to miss it by a few miles, pass just over the horizon and go stumbling in the sand till he died.

  Even if he was on the right bearing, he wasn’t sure he’d make it. At the rate he was consuming air, his other tank probably wouldn’t last long enough. He slowed his pace as much as he dared, trotting over stones that rattled and sand that gritted. But he couldn’t go too slow. There was the enemy, who might find his trail; and a section of them would surely try to strike directly at the American camp before he could arrive with his warning; and there was thirst, and airlessness, and cold.

  On and on. The loneliness was overwhelming. He might have been the last man on a dead and ruined world. The stones underfoot might have been skulls. He was beginning to feel dizzy now, more and more of his mind was dropping off into sleep. He cursed and tried to flog his energies up again. If he lost his wits, then he was done for.

  Pursuit, distance, cold, thirst, suffocation. Add one more enemy to the list: himself.

  How far had he come? There was no telling. He tried to count his steps, but he lost track. He stumbled on something, and went down on his stomach, and lay there sobbing.

  Up, for God’s sake! The stiffness clawed at him. He wanted to lie there and rest, he wanted to drown himself in water. There was an ocean in him, lapping under the surface of his mind, there was a warm primeval ocean, he thought he could hear a lulling wind blow across it, he thought he could sink down into its darkness and find sleep.

  He grew aware of the noise in his head, long thunderous waves, flashes like sunlight running along their foam. The stars began to flow together, constellations snake-danced before his eyes, he wanted to cry but he was too withered.

  Oxygen lack— He turned the valve wide open and sucked air into his lungs. For a moment, he almost passed out. Maybe he did. The stars steadied, hard and bright and merciless. He could see clear to the horizon, where it cut off the Milky way.

  His feet were like someone else’s now, they moved without his own will. The brief clarity vanished again. There was just enough of his consciousness left to watch the stars and gauge his direction. He didn’t care any longer whether he made it or not.

  Brightness in the east, growing and climbing, the shrunken sun ablaze on the rim of the world. Had he been going so long?

  He was plodding now, bent over, his arms swinging stiffly. Once, jerking toward awareness, he realized that his swollen tongue was hanging out between his teeth, and pulled it back in again. The sand dunes seemed to ripple, there was a restless shimmer on the desert as if he waded through water. Once more he thought he could hear the remote rushing of waves.

  The gauge said empty. He turned on his air pump, drawing power from the batteries, and tossed the cylinder into the dust. It was a niggard breath the pump gave him, and its dryness was like a flame in his mouth and nose and throat. He tried to lope, but fell to the ground, and lay there for a long while before he had the strength to get up. After that he walked.

  And walked.

  The sun was a blind dazzle overhead. He didn’t bother checking his direction any more. He slogged with his face turned toward the ground, his eyes closed most of the time. Once in a while he would look up, but there was only the desert.

  No – wait – many centuries later, he saw the hard flash of metal. It was the ship. He knew dully that he had found his way home, but he couldn’t remember why he had come.

  The air pump sighed and sputtered. Low voltage, he thought, without knowing what the words meant. Batteries about done for. He looked ahead at the ship. It didn’t seem any closer. Nobody was around. Should there have been? he asked himself vaguely.

  His feet rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell. You pick ‘em up and lay ‘em down, you pick ‘em up and lay ‘em down, you pick ‘em up and lay ‘em down, you …

  The pump whined to a halt. He didn’t feel the cold that bit through his suit. The ship disappeared in ragged blacknesses. He kept on walking.

  Then the blacknesses ran together, and rose up and hit him in the face, and he fell down into the great waiting ocean.

  XVI

  The hook bites back and claws itself fast. For a moment you jerk, in the utter astonishment of pain and awareness, down in a lightless dream. Then you feel the line drawing you upward.

  Sunlight burns in a watery sky. Almost, you can see the monstrous shape of the Fisher, but your brain is a dimness with only the red hook-slash to give it color. And you know, blindly and horribly, that the Fisher will drag you up into the sunlight.

  You clamp on the leader and pull away, rushing down again toward the bottom of the sea. Your head slams around, your whole body, at the savage jerk of the line. You thresh about, bending yourself into an arc, biting fins and tail into the cool soft water and the darkness. The line is drawn wire-taut, and your whole being is one great No.

  Up, then, tugging and yanking and fighting, aware only of the hook and the hard light, wishing only the sea depths. From a million miles away, the Fisher speaks, and his voice booms and echoes through the hollow cosmos. Crazily, you fight, and break the surface. The dry sharp air is a knife in your gills, the light is a hot roaring fire in your eyes. The voice of the Fisher resounds between a million watching stars.

  ‘He’s coming around.’

  Cycles of time wheel and thunder as you come around, biting your own tail in the pain of it. The line slackens, ever so faintly, and you plunge down again for the dear darkness. O spawn of night and primeval wetness, hurled gasping into the air, the hook is a living thing in your mouth, you spew out your own guts but the hook is still there. And the line is drawing, and you rise again into the terrible sky.

  The Fisher has you now, there is only the pain and whirling whirling whirling, strengthless you lie back against the line and are drawn ashore. For a moment, then, you flutter in mud, and the ocean drains from you, great waters rush down, cataracting over brain and nerve and bone, to lie still and waiting at the bottom of your skull. The ocean will wait for you, down in darkness.

  And you lie without power in a slowly tearing night, and look up into the face of the Fisher.

  ‘Are you all right, Collie?’ Alaric Wayne’s voice was very soft, gentle as a woman’s hand.

  ‘Y-y-yeh.’ He looked about him. His head weighed enormously, it was all he could do to turn it on the pillow, but there was a curious light clarity in him. His thoughts seemed to have winged feet, skimming over the surface of a mind washed clean by some long rain. ‘I – made it?’

  ‘Damn near didn’t,’ grunted Feinberg. ‘You conked out a couple of miles from the ship. If we hadn’t been watching for anything – we wouldn’t ‘a seen you. Damn near dead when we brought you in.’

  ‘I – I – s-s-sorry we had to be so rough w-w-with you,’ faltered Wayne. ‘Plasma, drugs, we had to wake you up as fast as possible without killing you.’

  ‘Yeah, reckon so.’ Collie was whispering, but the ship was so quiet that they had no trouble hearing. ‘Kind of urgent.’

  ‘What happened?’ snapped Arakelian. What’s the story?’

  It seemed a curiously distant adventure, as if it had happened to someone else. He told it in a few words.

  At the end, they nodded bleakly. ‘All right,’ said Feinberg. ‘I guess you can rest now. You deserve it.’

  Collie lay without other movement than his breathing, looking empty-minded up at the ceiling. It felt good. Drowsy and good.

  Presently the pain started, he grew aware of just how parched and burned his membranes were, just how sore his muscles felt. He could barely lift a hand to the water jug beside him. He lay drinking through the zero-gravity tube, like a baby, he thought with weak amusement, but the water didn’t help much. Still, he could feel strength returning, minute by minute he got back more of his control.

  Feinberg came in. ‘How’re you doing, boy?’

  ‘Okay, I reckon,’said Collie.

  There’s no damage done,’ said Feinberg. ‘You’ve got some frostbites, and of course there’s the effects of extreme thirst and some anoxia, but you’ll be as good as new in a week.’

  ‘If we live another week.’

  ‘Good point there. Our jolly friends with the cannon ought to be along pretty soon, and we’ve only got short-range defenses. We’re trying to figure out what to do.’

  ‘Well, how ‘bout lettin’ me sit in on it?’

  ‘If you feel strong enough. You should be able to give some useful advice. Tell you what, I’ll bring you some soup, and after that we’ll all confer here in the bunkroom. Got to mount a couple of lookouts, but they can talk over the intercom.’

  Half an hour later, Feinberg and Wayne came to sit by Collie’s bunk; Gammony and Arakelain were on guard duty elsewhere in the ship. Faces were drawn taut by strain. Collie realized that it had not been an easy time for those who stayed behind.

  ‘If they knew who you were,’ said Arakelian over the intercom, ‘their spies must really have cased us before we left Earth. They came loaded for bear.’

  ‘So far,’ said Feinberg, ‘we’ve only hit one really practical course of action. That’s to scram out of here and back to Earth.’

  ‘But Lois – Misha an’ Tom—’ protested Collie. ‘If they’re still alive.’

  ‘You don’t think any of us like the notion, do you?’ Feinberg scowled. ‘Still, if we try to play Quixote we may not even be able to warn people at home. There are five of us left, counting you who’re on the sick list. We got a couple of rifles and a Wayne resonator which is only effective at sixty feet or less. What the hell have we got to fight with?’

  The captain nodded. It was strange how he looked, more like a child which had been hurt than the chief of a mission. His voice was very low. ‘I cannot see any other solution. If we had some sort of aircraft – but we do not.’

  ‘We got the spaceship,’ said Gammony over the intercom.

  ‘And you, of all people, know how little maneuverable she is,’ said Arakelian. ‘Straight up or straight down, that’s really all she’s good for in a gravity field.’

  ‘Hey—’ Collie sat up. His abused muscles drew him back with a groan. ‘Hey, they ain’t got any air defense. We could bring the ship right down on top o’ theirs. Fry ‘em with our blast!’

  ‘By God! No,’ Feinberg shook his head. ‘Unless we want to fry our own people too.’

  ‘Yeah. I forgot about that.’ Collie grimaced.

  ‘Though, wait—’ Wayne’s mouth drew into a thin line. ‘It may be the best course. Sacrificing three lives, yes, but still there are large issues.’ He looked at the floor, clasping and unclasping his hands. ‘Forgive me,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Ah’m not so shore we could do it, anyways,’ said Gammony. ‘This heah boat’s tricky. We’d prob’ly have to come down so slow from so high above, they’d have plenty time to get out from under.’

  ‘If we had a heavy gun—’ breathed Arakelian. ‘We could land right in their camp, maybe. They’d have to yield.’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Collie. ‘That colonel o’ theirs is a tough man!’

  ‘All right, so we hole them. Air doesn’t puff out right away, you know, if there’s only one hole. They’ll have time to get on suits, and so will our friends.’ Arakelian chuckled without humor. ‘It’s a side issue, though. We haven’t got a heavy gun.’

  ‘Wait … wait …’ Alaric Wayne sprang to his feet. There was a sudden blaze in his pale eyes. ‘Don’t we?’

  They looked at the slim figure, there was a descending silence, and he knew they were expecting Wayne the superman, Wayne the unconquerable, Wayne the magician, to pull a rabbit from the hat. It drove him into stuttering, for a while he could only gibber at them. He knew his face was writhing and his body in a tremble and he wanted to run and hide, but there was no place to go.

  ‘I think I get it,’ said Feinberg slowly.

  Gammony spoke, they could almost see him shaking his head. ‘Hoo, man, y’all shore ‘spect a lot o’ this-heah boat, don’ yo’?’

  XVII

  In the following dawn, Collie was woken up. He leaned on Arakelian and made a painful way to the bridge. Today he would be needed, or he would be dead. It wasn’t a bad choice, as such things went.

  Feinberg was in the engine room, Gammony and Arakelian strapped themselves into the pilot chairs, Collie was given a seat near the main viewport. Wayne sat next to his dog, with a thing in his lap that was small and ugly, a hastily assembled confusion of tubes and coils and meters, with a cable running back to the main power-line. It seemed incredible that this could be the weapon which was their hope.

  The motors began to talk, warming up, and their voice shook in the hull and rattled teeth together and filled the heart with a sudden meaningless clutch of terror. Subsonics, Collie told himself, and tried to ignore the fear; but it rode with him. When he looked outside the landscape seemed wholly sinister. There it was, the desert, sand and dust and gaunt gray needles, streaked with mineral veins, curving toward a dark bloodless hue, the color of death. And yet, he thought, with a lifting within him, this haggard world was the future. It was bare and cold and cruel, but even in its darkest night there were more stars than you saw from Earth.

  Someday, he thought, it would be green out there.

  There were human voices now, become flat and impersonal and machine-like. ‘Number One bank ready, Number Two bank ready, Number Three bank ready …’ Fingers were dancing over the control panel, weaving in and out between flashing lights, an oddly beautiful thing to watch. Gammony’s head was cocked to one side, his eyes half-closed, as he blent his senses with those of the ship. ‘Five seconds, four seconds, three seconds …’

  The rocket lifted on a tail of fire, br-r-room, br-r-room, br-r-room, and Collie saw the landscape fall down and there was only the sky to be seen. They were moving at two Mars gravities, one emgee effective, it was extravagant of fuel but they had to swing that huge mass through heaven as slowly as it would go. If they won out they could get enough fuel from the Siberian craft. Or could they? Collie wouldn’t put it past Byelinsky to blow up the whole world. He thought of living here on Mars, eking out rations, making pitiful attempts to grow some food, starving and dying and cursing the sky which sent no relief.

  Thunder in the ship, thunder in the skull. From where he sat, Collie could see the big chart of Mars, on which he had marked the Siberian camp. He could not read the radar screen on which they located their own position, but Arakelian’s eyes were flickering over it, never resting, and his hands danced with Gammony’s. Pas de deux in a ballet called Man’s Hope. Or was it Man’s Dying?

  Gammony nodded, ever so slightly, and spoke something into the throat microphone which linked him with Arakelian and Feinberg. Three men, three parts of one ponderous machine, three little bundles of spongy gray tissue which had dreamed the machine into being. Slowly, the spaceship began to tilt forward.

  This was the maneuver they would have thought impossible even a day ago, which might still be impossible. The ship was a thing of free space, a whale meant to swim in currents of gravitational force, she could no more be jockeyed over a planetary surface than a fish could walk on land. Trying to fly her was an insanity. She would tilt too far and crash a mile down into the desert, she would split open under the stream and scatter herself across half Mars, she would crack a seam and whiff her air out and choke the crew where they sat. And yet, it had to be done. They could not go up into clear space, orbit around, and descend on the enemy camp, it would take too long and be too inaccurate. They had to do the impossible, or smash themselves into the face of Mars.

  After all, there is a fish which can cross dry land.

  Collie stole a look around. The pilots were lost to humanness, they had merged themselves utterly with the ship – Gammony’s balance and Arakelian’s speed and Feinberg’s delicate touch holding her teetering on the edge of ruin. (Thus far and no further, or she’ll heel over and nosedive … Slap that button! … So, girl, so, steady, easy does it …)

  Wayne sat relaxed, there was peace in his eyes. This was something he could understand, the huge interplay of mass and force, the simple realities of living and dying. The dog huddled close to him, his sullenness become a gentle trust.

  It struck Collie afresh how this conquest was something new to history. It would not be done by blood and iron and cunning, in spite of their present mission. It was a matter of patience, knowledge, slow building and planning and waiting. The enemy was not, ultimately, other men, it was a universe never really meant for humanity, and you had conquered it when you understood it.