Chapter V

With full daylight three half-tracks moved out from beside the grounded spacer to the site of the drilling operations. They paused while a group of men got out to inspect the dry holes and the line of stakes that had been placed to indicate the margins of the vanished lake. Then the cars moved on, scouting the surrounding desert.

The three wheeled together and headed straight for the outcropping, while Nick and Susan crouched low to keep their heads below the skyline. They came on and on until Nick began to have an uneasy suspicion they had been spotted, but at last they turned aside.

"Nick!" Susan's voice was vibrant with hatred. "That man in the turret of the center car is Gerald Harmon himself!"

Nick shielded his eyes and tried to study the tiny figure in the plastic dome, but the distance was too great to distinguish details. He cursed fluently and wished for any sort of power weapon, understanding now why the spaceship had seemed larger and sleeker than the usual freighters. The overlord of the Martian Exploitation Company had come to investigate in person, bringing his own personal cruiser.

Nick tried to rest, falling at last into an uneasy sleep disturbed by dreams of rippling streams and drenching rainstorms. He slept until the rays of the sinking sun crept under the ledge to bring him back to the realization of his arid, deadly surroundings.

But somewhere amid his dreams an idea had been born.

"You can handle a spacer, can't you?" he asked.

"Certainly. You don't think Dad handled the _Trailblazer_ alone?"

"Good. There may be a chance for you then. I don't like that blue-faced Merlo at all, but we have to play along with him. And this thing is bigger than any of us as individuals."

"You've seen how the camp is built in a hollow to protect it from the wind?"

"Yes, but--"

"They never thought of floods."

Susan's eyes gleamed as she sensed his idea.

"You mean if the Martians made their water-_voras_--?"

"A dozen _voras_ and a dozen water caves. The barrier would short out and the Martians could get in. There'd be hell's very own confusion and no lights. You might make it."

"And you?"

"Merlo is a blue-faced, pigheaded, tradition-bound fool, and no general. He'd just beat his men's lives out against the charged barrier without thinking of the only weapon he has that's worth a damn. I'm going down and tell him, right now. The attack is tomorrow night."

Susan's grey eyes searched his face.

"Aren't you a bit confused?" she asked mildly.

"How?" He was annoyed at her implied criticism.

"You are a fighter. I'm not. I speak Martian. You don't."

"They'd kill you, Sue! I can't let--"

"Then tell me, in Martian, just what you'd say to Merlo!"

"But--"

She threw his own words back at him. "This thing is bigger than any one of us. I'm going."

Reluctantly he agreed that her words made sense.

"All right," he sighed. "Tell Klev."

The Martian broke into twittering, remonstrating speech as Susan explained, pointing at himself. Slowly and painfully he climbed to his feet and took a few uncertain steps. But then his injured leg collapsed and he crawled ignominiously back.

"That leaves it to me," Susan declared. "Roll that boulder out of the way."

The old Martian, shamed by his own weakness, sat with shoulders slumped and face hidden in his hands as Susan prepared to leave.

She came to Nick and in an unexpected move threw her arms around him and pulled his face down. For a moment he held her close, their sun-parched, cracked lips clinging together.

"It could have been so lovely," she whispered as she broke away.

She was crying openly as she squeezed into the tunnel. Nick's fingernails dug into his palms as he stared after her, but there was nothing he could do.

The day was long, and without Susan beside him the night was even colder than the others. Once he woke and found his arms reaching out as though to touch her. But the following day, the last lonely day of waiting, was the worst and longest. Once he tested the point of his knife against his thumb. If the plan worked at all, he resolved, he would look for Merlo in the camp even before going after the spaceship. At least there would be revenge.

From time to time Klev looked up from where he lay in the blinding sunlight. There was sympathy on his greenish, distorted face, and although Earthman and Martian had no common language he seemed to understand the depth of Nick's feelings. And Nick in turn pitied this aged Martian who was dying an exile from his own race.

As the shadows lengthened Nick made his few preparations. Strips of cloth from his jacket made a harness to hold the nosepiece of the tiny oxygen bottle, still half full, against his face. No matter what happened he wouldn't need the jacket again. A piece of empty ration tin formed a clip that would hold the button valve open.

* * * * *

Darkness came and Nick rose. Klev chirped softly and extended his hand Earth fashion. Nick took it briefly, then turned away and clambered down from the outcropping into the desert.

The lights of Central Camp guided him as he set out. Deliberately he held a slow pace that would not tire him unduly, but his heart was pounding. This was the pay-off.

Everything was normal as Nick drew near. Groups of men moved about under the floodlights. The revolving searchlights atop the guard towers swept remorselessly around the circle of the barrier, occasionally striking the two half-tracks that held secondary patrol inside the charged fence. The ports of the big spaceship squatting on the launching grounds were dark, its polished hull reflecting the unwinking stars.

He was still a quarter mile from the barrier when the first excited yell reached him on the wind. One of the floodlights winked out. Nick quickened his stride as the noise from the camp increased. The lights showed a darkening patch that stretched from the launching grounds into the barracks area.

The barrier sparked as though some living creature had come into contact with it, and an alert sentry scoured that area with machine gun lead. Again the barrier sparked, hot blue and green stars shooting up in a great fountain.

And then Nick could see the water itself. He ran on toward the northwest border where the terrain was lowest, trying to keep his mind on the desperate business ahead. His spirits lifted slightly as he realized that Susan had reached Merlo. But what had happened to her then? She had still defied the Council.

His feet struck wet sand, then shallow, murky water while he was still a hundred yards from the barrier. He waded on as the water deepened.

Only a few scattered lights still gleamed as he stopped to adjust his improvised diving mask. Evidently the water was reaching the central power plant, but flares arched upward at irregular intervals to shatter the night. During the intervals of brightness Nick froze to immobility.

The gunners in the guard towers were firing at shadows. But no explosive bullets, for which Nick was especially glad as a stream of lead whipped the water nearby. There was a standing order forbidding the use of explosive shells where they might damage the barrier wires.

So far the firing was desultory, bursts coming only when the barrier sparked as the water deepened. Evidently the commander still considered the flood merely a freak of nature.

All at once there was no more ground beneath his feet. Nick began to swim.

A yell of alarm that changed to a shriek of agony cut the air, coming from the southern border of camp. Another. The firing grew suddenly intense, lines of red and yellow tracer whipping out from the towers. A flare exploded overhead to disclose a shadow like a giant bat that swooped heavily across the barrier and fell upon a Mec just inside. The man's automatic rifle roared a futile, unaimed burst as he died. The Martians themselves Nick could not see.

Dazzled by the intermittent glare, he almost swam into the barrier without seeing it. Only the barrier itself saved him as the rising water engulfed another wire and the lethal current popped and sparked. With a heave of his shoulders he swung aside and glanced up. Ten or twelve feet of the fence's thirty foot height still projected above the surface.

He floated, tightening his mask until the nosepiece dug into his face. Then he pushed the clip down over the valve, and as the life-giving gas hissed out closed his eyes and let himself sink into the silt-filled, inky water.

Bubbles spurted around the edge of the mask and roared upward past his ears, but he found that by inhaling slowly he could breathe. His feet touched bottom and his legs sank in almost to the knees. The fine, dusty sand of Mars that had lain arid for so many centuries had changed to clinging, sticky mud. He pulled himself free and swam forward anxiously along the bottom.

One outstretched hand found the barrier. He felt the prick of the hooked, knife-edged barbs as they sank through the cloth with which he had wrapped his hands. He advanced the other more cautiously. Here below the surface the killing current of the barrier was dead, shorted away by the dirty water.

He drew himself downward, hand over hand along the closely spaced wires, down to where the barrier met the ground. He probed at the mud, holding himself in place with one hand. Wires. And at full arm's depth in the mud, still wires. He hooked his feet into the fence and dug with both hands, flinging the gooey muck aside in great, swirling gobs until the water grew thick and viscid around him. More strands of wire. He dug more frantically, hanging head down in the hole he had made. And then his clawing fingers encountered the solid rock into which the steel supports of the barrier were anchored. It was impossible to dig under that.

A trickle of muddy water seeped into the mask, stinging the lining of his nose and making him want to sneeze. With an effort he extracted himself from the sticky burrow and clung to the ground level strands until the spasm passed. The hissing tone of the compressed oxygen was perceptibly lower.

* * * * *

Gently he grasped one strand with both cloth-wrapped hands, spreading his fingers in an attempt to avoid the barbs. But this was no ordinary barbed wire and the spacing of the evilly sharp, machine-finished prongs was such that one still pressed against each palm. His heavy boots protected his feet as he braced them against the adjoining strand.

He brought his powerful back and leg muscles into play, ignoring the pain that lanced through his hands. The wires gave a fraction of an inch. He pulled again. The wires had been four inches apart; now they were almost six. At the third pull he could feel the barb in his left hand touch bone with a grating rasp, but the wires stretched still further. Again and again he tugged, resting only when he grew dizzy with pain.

And then the oxygen was gone. He had just time to gulp in one last lungful as the hissing died and the bubbles around his face stopped. Once more he heaved at the wires, using every ounce of power his body could muster.

Then, holding his breath, he rolled sideways into the gap he had created. The slackened wires sagged down and the cruel barbs bit into his chest and back and legs.

He winced at the pain as he tore his hands loose from the deeply embedded prongs, then pulled the wires away from his chest and rolled his body further into the opening. The points dug into his chest again while he moved one leg and then the other.

When he knew he could hold his breath only a few seconds more he broke clear with a lurch that left bleeding furrows across his body and floated dizzily toward the surface. One hand whipped the useless, empty oxygen bottle from his face.

He sucked in the thin air of Mars with harsh, rasping, grateful breaths as he broke surface, glancing around to restore his sense of direction. He was inside the barrier.

Seven of the armored cars were lined up along the southern boundary of the camp, the focusing coils on the muzzles of their proton cannon glowing red from continual firing, their powerful lights picking out targets for the gunners. As Nick swam on, one of the cars tried to move forward and struck a soft spot in the muddy ground. Its light waved wildly, then went out as the car overturned and rolled into the water.

High above the dark water the hull of the spaceship glowed in the starlight. Nick headed straight toward it, sometimes swimming, sometimes floundering through deep, sticky mud that sucked tenaciously at his feet. Even in the darkness and confusion he knew his way, for Central Camp had been his home for many months.

As suddenly as it had appeared the water began to recede, draining into the ground. Nick understood. The barrier had been breached, and Martians were not able to swim. The heavy combat vehicles of the Exploiters were bogged down in the mud, but from the sounds of firing Nick knew that a good many Mecs had gained the safety of the high, unflooded guard towers. With daylight the surviving Martians would be forced to retreat.

There were still many deep pools of water about, and a layer of slippery silt over everything, when his route took him close to the administration building. He edged quietly around the corner just as a wet, bedraggled figure floundered through the mire to the doorway. The figure, outlined for an instant, was human enough, but to Nick it seemed somehow _wrong_. Quickly his mind placed the discrepancy. The man wore a coat instead of the short uniform jacket of the Mec.

Mud sucked noisily at Nick's boots as he followed, but the sound was drowned in a renewed burst of gunfire. Nick smiled grimly as his killer training awoke again under the influence of familiar surroundings.

Harmon was halfway up the stairs, sure of his own safety and pausing to wipe some of the mud from his face, when Nick's knife point penetrated the overlord's expensive suit and jabbed at his back.

"Don't move!" Nick snapped.