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"I talk their language, you know." "Yes, I do know, darling, but that's utterly foolish. They're only animals, after all, and we have to get to Ultra Vires before night, if we can." He kept the groundcar on its course. Maya lapsed into disgruntled silence.
Nuwell stole a sidelong glance at her, his breath catching slightly at the curve of the petite, perfectly feminine form beneath the loose Martian tunic and baggy trousers. He reached over and patted her hand. But Maya was offended. She kept her black head turned away from him, looking out of the groundcar dome across the desert.
He was chattering into the radio frantically again. "They're evidently not tuned in on the emergency band, Nuwell," she said to him. "But they're coming almost directly toward us. They're bound to see us soon, if they haven't already." "That's true," said Nuwell, and added sourly: "But they ought to be tuned in. It's required by law." The dustcloud moved closer slowly, too slowly for a groundcar.
Miles away, Nuwell slowed the groundcar as it approached the lip of that precipitous slope bordering the short canal which connects Juventae Fons with the Arorae Sinus Lowland. He consulted a rough chart, and turned the groundcar southward. A drive of about a kilometer brought them to a wide descending ledge down which they were able to drive into the canal.
There are two questions about it. One is who's to be kept alive, and the other is why." The groundcar aimed now for a cluster of faintly brighter lights on the far side of the great open space. They enlarged as they grew nearer. Maril said hesitantly, "There was someone, Korvan " Calhoun didn't catch the rest of the name. Maril said hesitantly, "He was working on food plants.
"Go away," he whispered hoarsely at last. "Go out of here, monster!" Obediently, Brute shambled out of the study. As he passed through the door, Goat regained his voice and called after him: "Tell the children to come and take away Adam's body." Kilometers away, Maya Cara Nome and S. Nuwell Eli rode a groundcar that moved swiftly across the interminable waves of the red sand.
It had been a little too far away to discern its details clearly, but there was something strange about the appearance of that groundcar. A glassy bug, but not entirely sleek and shiny. Rather like a bug that had come out second best in an argument with another bug. Maya arose, purposefully.
To practical, rational man, it is the Xanthe Desert. Whatever else he might unwittingly be, S. Nuwell Eli considered himself a practical, rational man, and it was across the bumpy sands of the Xanthe Desert that he guided his groundcar westward with that somewhat cautious proficiency that mistrusts its own mastery of the machine.
She watched it, interestedly, as it scurried like a huge, glassy bug along the curving road and disappeared under the parapet in front of the chateau. Mail from Mars City, perhaps, or supplies. Maybe even a new guest. Something struck her, now that the groundcar was no longer in sight.
Maya's onyx eyes surveyed this dullness aloofly, then lifted over the nearby parapet and across the sparse terrestrial lawn which would grow only under the dome. The far cliffs of the Thaumasia Foelix Desert loomed darkly, distorted through the dome's sides. The dome's airlock opened to admit a groundcar.
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