The ancient leviathan heaved mightily in the vast
buried cavern, pumping water upward as it had been
told. Only hunted Nick Tinker knew that more than
just water was coming to the dust-dry surface!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The hot, high whine scorched past his face and the slug splatted intothe eroded grey wall beside him. He should have died then, but hisinstinctive recoil at feeling something sticky and moist beneath hisfeet saved him.
Nick Tinker let himself crumple and fall, a trick which during the Wardays back on Earth had fooled more than one sniper. His left hand slidunder his padded jacket toward his gun, but the movement looked asthough he were clutching his chest. His right arm landed outstretched,and he let that hand clutch convulsively at the air. Then he lay verystill beneath the unwinking Martian stars while the thin, chillingnight wind whispered through the deserted, sand-drifted streets.
The Gravinol was gradually leaving his brain, leaving him feelingfully alive for the first time since he had entered the Special Corpsback on Earth at the age of seventeen. He wasn't sure he liked beingso completely alive, for it was all he could do to keep his body fromcringing under the expectation of another, better-aimed bullet. Thestoic fatalism was gone.
He lay motionless, but his trained senses were busily sorting theeerie impressions of this undead Martian city, picking out a sensationof—someone watching. The feeling localized itself on an oval openingin the hulking black building across the wide street. His gun handmoved imperceptibly and his jacket tore and smoldered as he fired. Therecoil slide of the heavy automatic thumped a bruise against his ribs,and even as the explosive bullet flared against the window's edge hewas on his feet, zigzagging across the street in a stooping rush toflatten himself against the wall.
He watched the greenish light of a glow-plate seeping from the window,hoping for a glimpse of the sniper's silhouette. The window had beendark before, but his bullet had evidently damaged the screen-creaturethat covered the window. He knew the screen-creatures well, the living,amorphous and deadly remnants of a Martian civilization that stillguarded almost every opening in this abandoned city, rendering it sohazardous for unwary Earthmen.
His groping hands found the narrow entrance to the building and heducked in. Someone had been there before him, and recently, for thedoor-creature inside the alcove hung in tattered shreds. One of itstorn, limp folds touched his hand as he passed, and with a suddenresurgence of alien life it contracted around his wrist. It tried tounleash its deadly shock, but it was weak and Nick felt only a fainttingle.
He jerked free and went up the inside ramp at a fast but quiet run, hisfinger ready on the trigger as he neared the top.
Then Nick stopped dead as he saw his target. The girl looked hardlymore than a child. Her tattered blouse was pulled aside and she wasmopping blindly at a bleeding gash low on one shoulder. The back of herother hand scrubbed at her closed eyes. Her face, framed in uncombedcoppery hair, was peppered with grey freckles of rock dust thrown byNick's explosive bullet.
His boots gritting in the dust, warned her, for she whirled, openingred-rimmed, watering eyes and snatching up a heavy rifle.
It would have been an easy shot, but Nick did not fire.
Her rifle spat once into its silencer as he dived across the ro