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Updated: May 3, 2025
He was signing the registration book, a tall, broad-shouldered man in a marsuit, holding his marshelmet under his arm. Why would he be wearing a marsuit in a groundcar? As she looked, he laid down the pen and turned. His face was darkly tanned, strong, handsome. His hair was black as midnight, his eyes startlingly pale in the dark face.
As soon as its air reached terrestrial density and composition, he removed his marshelmet. Goat rode the elevator to the ground level, left it and hurried down a corridor, reaching the outside airlock in time to admit the two figures. Adam entered first, easily confident, carrying his head like a king. Brute shambled behind him.
The only outstanding feature of its virtually featureless hulk was a tower which struck upward from its northern side. As the summer afternoon progressed, Dr. G. O. T. Hennessey paced the windy summit of the tower, peered frequently into the desert north beneath a sunshading hand, and waggled his goat beard in annoyance under his transparent marshelmet.
It was remarkable, thought Maya, how smooth and flat the desert looked from the air, and how rough and rolling it was when one had to walk across the packed sand. They had been walking for hours and, despite the gentle gravity of Mars, she was getting very tired. "It's farther than I thought," said Nuwell, his voice distorted by the marshelmet speaker. "Distances on the chart are deceptive.
Down below, he knew, Nuwell and the Masters were gasping out their lives in the thin air, like beached fish. Their recent attacker, Vidonati, lay half out of the door of the control room, his hands clutching convulsively at the floor. "That's not the way I'd planned it, but it's just as good!" Dark exclaimed. "We've taken the farm!" Then he remembered. Maya had no marshelmet!
Then, as the beam of Dark's gun swung toward him, Vidonati ducked precipitately back into the control room. "He got your marshelmet!" exclaimed Dark. "We're going to have to go in and flush him out of there, and just hope there's another marsuit in there, before we can open the airlock." Heatgun in hand, Dark started for the door of the control room, Maya at his heels.
"Here, put on one of these," suggested Dark, picking up the one he had selected for Old Beard. Maya wriggled into it. The Martians, she said, were on the other side of Ultra Vires, so they left the motor pool and walked down one of the long corridors together, Maya clinging to Dark's arm with one hand and carrying her marshelmet under her other arm.
"That little airlock's too small for a copter to go through it." "The roof rolls back," said Dark. "Put on your helmet, and I'll show you." Maya donned her marshelmet. Dark went to the wall and pulled a switch. Nothing happened. "I forgot," he said. "The electricity's off. Well, let's try something." Dark concentrated his mind intensely on the movable ceiling.
The door at the other end of the room opened, and a man emerged, a heatgun in his hand. Vidonati stopped in his tracks, startled, at the sight of Dark and Maya. Dark grunted in surprise, and reached for his heatgun. Even as Dark freed his weapon, Vidonati fired. The beam missed them, melting away the top of Maya's marshelmet and setting the bunk aflame.
If they had, we'd have been trapped below. If they have those barriers on all four ramps, the Phoenix can't stay around long enough to burn through them, because the Masters have probably already called for help from Mars City." Maya had laid her marshelmet down on one of the bunks, and was pulling the marsuit on over her tunic and trousers.
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