jeweled furniture had been wrong. It was
more like the Zaarr, that report. Heaven really
consisted in lying still in delicious dampness, with a ten-times blessed trickle of liquid into your open mouth.
Stover’s
eyes, no longer dried out, opened. And he saw heaven as well as felt it. The
dull-clouded inside of a semi-transparent dome, against which spread the long
branches and broad leaves of a blue-gray bush was above him, while around him
sprawled three bladder-bodied, six-tentacled, flower-faced Martians.
“Lie
sstill,” purred the one with an artificial voice-box. “You arre verry
ssick—nearr to death.’ 7
“I’m
not,” protested Stover, and sat up.
His
dusty garments, stolen in a police dressing-room, had been removed. His naked
skin felt cool, moist, and relaxed. He touched his arm with a finger. There was
a sleek damp to it, like the damp of a frog.
“Lie
sstill,” said the Martian spokesman again. “If you do not fearr ssick- ness,
fearr then the coming of a ssearrch parrty.”
Stover
lay back at once in the neat sandy hollow where they had bedded him. “Are they
looking for me?” he asked anxiously.
THE
flowery head of his informant nodded, Terrestrial fashion. “Thrree timess they
have come herre to peerr in. We ssaw them coming, and each time we coverred you
with ssand to hide you. We told them we knew nothing of a fugitive Terrress-
trrial. A wind blew away yourr trrackss.”
Stover
was content to lie still now. “How long have I been here?” he asked.
“A day and a night. It iss now the ssecond
forrenoon.”
Back
into Stover’s wakening mind floated memory of all that had transpired to bring
him here. So it was getting on toward noon . Three noons ago he had awakened in Buckalew’s luxurious
apartment, reckless and carefree. At noon the following day, he had been in the
police cell, again sleeping. When the third noon came, he had lain senseless in this poor
makeshift den where Martians huddled to keep life in themselves. And now—
“I’ll
be awake this noon ,” he
said aloud. “I’ve got a lot of escaping to do.” To the Martian he said: “Which
way is the nearest city? Besides
Pulambar,
I mean.”
A
tentacle pointed away. “But you cannot travel by day, on foot and un- derr the
ssun. Wait until night. We sshall help you then.”
Once
again Stover took a look about. He saw whence had come the trickle into his
mouth. One of those drinking tubes had been thrust into the integument of a
great branch above him. Since he was awake, the tip of the tube had been
thriftily plugged. But he felt dry again, and as though reading that thought in
his mind, the Martian who did the talking removed the plug.
“Drrink,”
he bade Stover, and Stover drank.
He
pulled strongly on the tube, and a delicious spurt of plant-juice, free-
flowing and pleasantly tart-sweet, filled his mouth. What joy to drink! What
relief, what privilege.
He
stopped sucking all at once. “Plug that up,” he commanded. “Isn’t it very
precious, that juice? How is there enough for me and
for you others, too?”
Something like a deprecating chuckle
came from his attendant. “Do not ssay the worrd ‘enough’, Dillon Sstover. On Marrss, therre iss no ssuch worrd ass ‘enough’.”
“You’ve
been depriving yourselves to take care of me!” Stover marveled, almost
accusingly. “Why? I’m a stranger, a vagabond, wanted by police, charged with
murder.”
CHAPTER VIII The Hope of Mars
HE
was suddenly aware
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