It created some disturbance among our'V-r-r-riends,' however--and then I noticed the smoke eddying andswirling past us, and sure enough, there was the entrance!
"I grabbed Tweel and out we dashed and after us our twenty pursuers. Thedaylight felt like Heaven, though I saw at first glance that the sun wasall but set, and that was bad, since I couldn't live outside mythermo-skin bag in a Martian night--at least, without a fire.
"And things got worse in a hurry. They cornered us in an angle betweentwo mounds, and there we stood. I hadn't fired nor had Tweel; therewasn't any use in irritating the brutes. They stopped a little distanceaway and began their booming about friendship and ouches.
"Then things got still worse! A barrel-brute came out with a pushcartand they all grabbed into it and came out with handfuls of foot-longcopper darts--sharp-looking ones--and all of a sudden one sailed past myear--zing! And it was shoot or die then.
"We were doing pretty well for a while. We picked off the ones next tothe pushcart and managed to keep the darts at a minimum, but suddenlythere was a thunderous booming of 'v-r-r-riends' and 'ouches,' and awhole army of 'em came out of their hole.
"Man! We were through and I knew it! Then I realized that Tweel wasn't.He could have leaped the mound behind us as easily as not. He wasstaying for me!
"Say, I could have cried if there'd been time! I'd liked Tweel from thefirst, but whether I'd have had gratitude to do what he wasdoing--suppose I _had_ saved him from the first dream-beast--he'd doneas much for me, hadn't he? I grabbed his arm, and said 'Tweel,' andpointed up, and he understood. He said, 'No--no--no, Tick!' and poppedaway with his glass pistol.
"What could I do? I'd be a goner anyway when the sun set, but I couldn'texplain that to him. I said, 'Thanks, Tweel. You're a man!' and feltthat I wasn't paying him any compliment at all. A man! There are mightyfew men who'd do that.
"So I went 'bang' with my gun and Tweel went 'puff' with his, and thebarrels were throwing darts and getting ready to rush us, and boomingabout being friends. I had given up hope. Then suddenly an angel droppedright down from Heaven in the shape of Putz, with his under-jetsblasting the barrels into very small pieces!
"Wow! I let out a yell and dashed for the rocket; Putz opened the doorand in I went, laughing and crying and shouting! It was a moment or sobefore I remembered Tweel; I looked around in time to see him rising inone of his nosedives over the mound and away.
"I had a devil of a job arguing Putz into following! By the time we gotthe rocket aloft, darkness was down; you know how it comes here--liketurning off a light. We sailed out over the desert and put down once ortwice. I yelled 'Tweel!' and yelled it a hundred times, I guess. Wecouldn't find him; he could travel like the wind and all I got--or elseI imagined it--was a faint trilling and twittering drifting out of thesouth. He'd gone, and damn it! I wish--I wish he hadn't!"
The four men of the _Ares_ were silent--even the sardonic Harrison. Atlast little Leroy broke the stillness.
"I should like to see," he murmured.
"Yeah," said Harrison. "And the wart-cure. Too bad you missed that; itmight be the cancer cure they've been hunting for a century and a half."
"Oh, that!" muttered Jarvis gloomily. "That's what started the fight!"He drew a glistening object from his pocket.
"Here it is."
A Martian Odyssey Page 6