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And, with this energy, the low temperature did not bother him. Behind him, by a rope, he dragged a little two-wheeled cart he had constructed from groundcar parts. It rolled and bumped over the sandy terrain, containing all the marsuits and all the seven heatguns that he had been able to find at Ultra Vires. It also contained a supply of water, in cans.
In a thin atmosphere without sufficient oxygen to support animal life or even the higher forms of terrestrial plant life, they wore no marsuits, no helmets, no oxygen tanks. The man who walked in front was tall, erect, powerfully muscled. His features and short-clipped hair were coarse, but self-assured intelligence shone in his smoky eyes.
And he failed. He was standing in the dim, dusty corridor, two marsuits under his arm, straining futilely toward a place he could not reach. And now he actually heard, with his ears, the muted vibration above him as the copter's engines roared to life. Dark started running. He dropped the marsuits, and ran down the corridor. He leaped up the stairs, two and three at a time.
"None of the groundcars at Ultra Vires was in operating condition." "Then there's no chance of the rest of us escaping," said Old Beard disappointedly. "We can't get at the groundcars here, and the marsuits you brought won't help. The oxygen supply of a marsuit isn't adequate to take us from here to the nearest civilization." "I think we can get to the groundcars," answered Dark confidently.
I discovered, before I was shot, that I can operate just as well outside, in the Martian atmosphere, without a helmet. And that's why Goat's records may solve our problem. "So tonight I'll leave this place and go to Ultra Vires. If there are any marsuits and groundcars left there, I'll come back here with them, and you and Happy and Shadow can escape with me.
"You fill the fuel tanks, and I'll run down to the motor pool and pick up those other two marsuits. One of them is for my friend Happy, who is very fat, and he couldn't wear either of the emergency suits in the copter." Maya uncoiled the hose from one of the fuel drums in the room and poked it into the copter's tank. Dark left the room, walked down the corridor and descended the stairs.
As the groundcar emerged onto the sage-covered plain, the men were helping the two policemen from Ophir unload the box containing Dark Kensington's remains from another groundcar and load it into the baggage bay of the copter. Nuwell and Maya slipped into their marsuits, secured the helmets and climbed out of the groundcar.
Then he would pick up three marsuits and walk back across the desert to the Canfell Hydroponic Farm. Dark walked across the desert toward the Canfell Hydroponic Farm. He had discarded the marsuit he had been wearing, and substituted for it a light loincloth torn from one of Goat Hennessey's sheets.
"You've been here twenty-five years and have never been able to escape?" asked Dark incredulously. "This place isn't guarded," replied Old Beard, with a wry smile. "They don't have to guard it. All they have to guard are the supply room where the marsuits are kept and the motor pool of groundcars.
With an audible gasp, the woman disentangled herself, in dangerous haste, from the groundcar engine and faced Dark. They stared at each other, in mutual shocked recognition. There was Dark Kensington, bearded, his arms full of marsuits, and there was Maya Cara Nome, sleeves rolled up, her lovely face streaked with grease. Dark's jaw dropped. Maya's lips formed a round, astonished O.
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