'They could do it, too,' Tex muttered. 'They outnumber us a thousand to one.'
'And,' added Breska viciously, 'the lousy taxpayers won't even give us decent equipment to fight with.'
Tex grinned. 'Armies are always stepchildren. I guess the sheep just never did like the goats, anyhow.' She shrugged. 'Better keep an eye on Kuna. She might try something.'
'What could she do? If she deserts, they'll catch her trying to skip out, if the savages don't get her first. She won't try it.'
But in the morning Kuna was gone, and the lock of silver hair in Tex's pocket was gone with her.
* * *
Five hot, steaming days dragged by. The water sank lower and lower in the tank. Flakes of rust dropped from every metal surface at the slightest touch.
Tex squatted on a slimy block of stone in the compound, trying to forget hunger and thirst in the task of sewing a patch on her pants. Fog gathered in droplets on the reddish hairs of her naked legs, covered her face with a greasy patina.
Breska crouched beside her, coughing in deep, slow spasms. Out under the sagging net, women were listlessly washing underwear in a tub of boiled swamp water. The stuff held some chemical that caused a stubborn sickness no matter what you did to it.
Tex looked at it thirstily. 'Girl!' she muttered. 'What I wouldn't give for just one glass of ice water!'
'Shut up,' growled Breska. 'At least, I've quit being hungry'
She coughed, her dark face twisted in pain. Tex sighed, trying to ignore the hunger that chewed her own belly like a prisoned wolf.
Nine more days to go. Food and water cut to the barest minimum. Gun parts rusting through all the grease they could put on. The strands of the net were perilously thin. Even the needle in her hand was rusted so that it tore the cloth.
Of the thirty-one women left after Kuna deserted, they had lost seven; four by green snakes slipped in through broken drain gratings, three by beetle-bombs tossed over the parapet. There had been no further attacks. In the dark, fog-wrapped nights swamp women smeared with black mud crept silently under the walls, delivered their messages of death, and vanished.
In spite of the heat, Tex shivered. How much longer would this silent war go on? The swamp-men had to clear the fort before the relief column came. Where was Kuna, and why had she stolen that lock of hair? And what scheme was the savage beauty who led these devils hatching out?
Water slopped in the tub. Somebody cursed because the underwear never dried in this lousy climate. The heat of the hidden sun seeped down in stifling waves.
And suddenly a guard on the parapet yelled.
'Something coming out of the swamp! Woman the guns!'
Tex hauled her pants on and ran with the others. Coming up beside the lookout, she drew her pistol and waited.
Something was crawling up the tongue of dry land toward the fort. At first she thought it was one of the scaly war-dogs. Then she caught a gleam of scarlet collar-facings, and shouted.
'Hold your fire, women! It's Kuna!'
The grey, stooped thing came closer, going on hands and knees, its dark head hanging. Tex heard Breska's harsh breathing beside her. Abruptly the Martian turned and ran down the steps.
'Don't go out there, Breska!' Tex yelled. 'It may be a trap.' But the Martian went on, tugging at the rusty lugs that held the postern gate. It came open, and she went out.
Tex sent women down to guard it, fully expecting white figures to burst from the fog and attempt to force the gate.
Breska reached the crawling figure, hauled it erect and over one shoulder, and started back at a stumbling run. Still there was no attack. Tex frowned, assailed by some deep unease. If Kuna had gone into the swamps, she should never have returned alive. There was a trap here somewhere, a concealed but deadly trick.
Silence. The rank mist lay in lazy coils. Not a leaf rustled in the swamp edges.
Tex swore and ran down the steps. Breska fell through the gate and sagged down, coughing blood, and it was Tex who caught Kuna.
The girl lay like a grey skeleton in her arms, the bones of her face almost cutting the skin. Her mouth was open. Her tongue was black and swollen, like that of a woman dying of thirst.
Kuna's sunken, fever-yellowed eyes opened. They found the tub, in which soiled clothing still floated.
With a surge of strength that took Tex completely by surprise, the girl broke from her and ran to the water, plunging her face in and gulping like an animal.
Tex pulled her away. Kuna sagged down, sobbing. There was something wrong about her face, but Tex couldn't think what.
'Won't let me drink,' she whispered. 'Still won't let me drink. Got to have water.' She clawed at Tex. 'Water!'
Tex sent someone after it, trying to think what was strange about Kuna, scowling. There were springs of sweet water in the swamps, and even the natives couldn't drink the other. Was it simply the desire to torture that had made them deny the deserter water?
Tex caught the girl's collar. 'How did you get away?'
But Kuna struggled to her knees. 'Breska,' she gasped. 'Breska!'
The older woman looked at her, wiping blood from her lips. Kuna said something in Martian, retched, choked on her own blood, and fell over. Tex knew she was dead.
'What did she say, Breska?'
The Martian's teeth showed briefly white.
'She said she wished she'd had my guts.' Her expression changed abruptly. She caught Tex's shoulder.
'Look, Tex! Look at the water!'
* * *
Where there had been nearly a full tub, there was now only a little moisture left in the bottom. While Tex watched, that too disappeared, leaving the wood dry.
Tex picked up an undershirt. It was as dry as any she'd ever hung in the prairie air, back in Texas. She touched her face. The skin was like sun-cured leather. Her hair had not a drop of fog on it.
Yet the mist hung as heavy as ever.
Captain Smith came out of the radio room, looking up at the net and the guns. Tex heard her mutter, quite unconsciously.
'It's the rust that'll beat us. It's the rust that'll lose us Venus in the end.'
Tex said, 'Captain. . . .'
Smith looked at her, startled. But she never had time to ask what the matter was. The lookout yelled. Wings rushed overhead. Guns chattered from the parapet. The attack was on.
Tex ran automatically for the catwalk. Passing Kuna's crumpled body, she realized something she should have seen at first.
'Kuna's body was dry when she came into the fort. All dry, even her clothes.' And then, 'Why did the swamp-men wait until she was safely inside and the door closed to attack?'
With a quarter of their guns disabled and two-thirds of their garrison gone, they still held superiority due to their position and powerful weapons.
There was no concerted attempt to force the walls. Groups of white-haired warriors made sallies, hurled beetle-bombs and weighed bags of green snakes, and retired into the mist. They lost women, but not many.
In the air, it was different. The weird, half-feathered mounts wheeled and swooped, literally diving into the gunbursts, the riders hurling missiles with deadly accuracy. And they were dying, women and lizards, by the dozen.
Tex, feeling curiously dazed, fired automatically. Bodies thrashed into the net. Rust flakes showered like rain. Looking at the thin strands, Tex wondered how long it would hold.
Abruptly she caught sight of what, subconsciously, she'd been looking for. He was there, darting high over the melee, his silver hair flying, his body an iridescent pearl in the mist.
Captain Smith spoke softly.
'You see what he's up to, Tex? Those flyers are volunteers. Their orders are to kill as many of our women as possible before they die themselves, but they must fall inside the walls! On the net, Tex. To weaken, break it if possible.'
Tex nodded. 'And when it goes. . . .'
'We go. We haven't enough women to beat them if they should get inside the walls.'
Smith brushed
her small military mustache, her only sign of nervousness. Tex saw her start, saw her touch the bristles wonderingly, then finger her skin, her tunic, her hair.
'Dry,' she said, and looked at the fog. 'My Lady, dry!'
'Yes,' returned Tex grimly. 'Kuna brought it back. She couldn't get wet even when she tried to drink. Something that eats water. Even if the net holds, we'll die of thirst before we're relieved.'
She turned in sudden fury on the distant figure of the man and emptied her gun futilely at his swift-moving body.
'Save your ammunition,' cautioned Smith, and cried out, sharply.
Tex saw it, the tiny green thing that had fastened on her wrist. She pulled her knife and lunged forward, but already the snake had grown incredibly. Smith tore at it vainly.
Tex got in one slash, felt her knife slip futilely on rubbery flesh of enormous contractile power. Then the venom began to work. A mad look twisted the officer's face. Her gun rose and began to spit bullets.
Grimly, Tex shot the gun out of Smith's hand, and struck down with the gun-barrel. Smith fell. But already the snake had thrown a coil round her neck and shifted its grip to the jugular.
Tex sawed at the rubbery flesh. Beaten as though with a heavy whip, she stood at last with the body still writhing in her hand.
Captain Smith was dead, with the snake's jaws buried in her throat.
Dimly Tex heard the mellow notes of the war-chief's horn. The sky cleared of the remnants of the suicide squad. The ground attackers vanished into the swamps. And then the man whirled his mount sharply and sped straight for the fort.
Puffs of smoke burst around his but he was not hit. Low over the parapet he came, so that Tex saw the pupils of his pale-green eyes, the vital flow of muscles beneath pearly skin.
She fired, but her gun was empty.
He flung one hand high in derisive salute, and was gone. And Breska spoke softly behind Tex.
'You're in command now. And there are just the fourteen of us left.'
* * *
Tex stood staring down at the dead and dying caught in the rusty net. She felt suddenly tired; so tired that just standing and looking seemed too much drain on hers wasted strength.
She didn't want to fight any more. She wanted to drink, to sleep, and forget.
There was only one possible end. Her mouth and throat were dry with this strange new dryness, her thirst intensified a hundredfold. The swamp women had only to wait. In another week they could take the fort without losing a woman.
Even with the reduced numbers of the defenders, this fiendish thing would make their remaining water supply inadequate. And then another thought struck her.
Suppose it stayed there, so that even if by some miracle the garrison held out, it made holding the fort impossible no matter how many women, or how much water, there was?
The women were looking at her. Tex let the dead snake drop to the catwalk and vanish under a pall of scarlet beetles.
'Clean up this mess,' said Tex automatically. Breska's black eyes were brilliant and very hard. Why didn't the women move?
'Go on,' Tex snapped. 'I'm ranking officer here now.'
The women turned to their task with a queer reluctance. One of them, a big scar-faced hulk with a mop of hair redder far than Tex's, stood long after the others had gone, watching her out of narrowed green eyes.
Tex went slowly down into the compound. There were no breaks in the net, but another few days of rust would finish them.
What was the use of fighting on? If they left, now, they might get out alive. Headquarters could send more women, retake Fort Washington.
But Headquarters didn't have many women. And the man with the eyes like pale-green flames wouldn't waste any time.
Some falling body had crushed a beetle-bomb caught in the net. The scarlet things were falling like drops of blood on Kuna's body. Tex smiled crookedly. In a few seconds there'd be nothing left of the flesh Kuna had cherished so dearly.
And then Tex rubbed freckled hands over her tired blue eyes, wondering if she were at last delirious.
The beetles weren't eating Kuna.
They swirled around her restlessly, scenting meat, but they didn't touch her. Her face showed parchment dry under the whorls of fog. And suddenly Tex understood.
'It's because she's dry. They won't touch anything dry.'
Recklessly, she put her own hand down in the scarlet stream. It divided and flowed around it, disdaining the parched flesh.
Tex laughed, a brassy laugh with an edge of hysteria in it. Now that they were going to die anyway, they didn't have to worry about beetle-bombs.
Feet, a lot of them, clumped up to where she knelt. The red-haired giant with the green eyes stood over her, the women in a sullen, hard-faced knot behind her.
The red-haired woman, whose name was Bulla, had a gun in her hand. She said gruffly,
'We're leavin', Tex.'
Tex got up. 'Yeah?'
'Yeah. We figure it's no use stayin'. Comin' with us?'
Why not? It was her only chance for life. She had no stake in the colonies. She'd joined the Legion for adventure.
Then she looked at Kuna, and at Breska, thinking of all the people of two worlds who needed ground to grow food on, and water to grow it with. Something, perhaps the ancestor who had died in the Alamo, made her shake her sandy head.
'I reckon not,' she said. 'And I reckon you ain't, either.'
She was quick on the draw, but Bulla had her gun already out. The bullet thundered against Tex's skull. The world exploded into fiery darkness, through which she heard Breska say,
'Sure, Bulla. Why should I stay here to die for nothing?'
Tex tried to cry out, but the blackness drowned her.
She came to lying on the catwalk. Her head was bandaged. Frowning, she opened her eyes, blinking against the pain.
Breska hunched over the nearest gun, whistling softly through her teeth. 'The Lone Prairee.' Tex stared incredulously.
'I—I thought you'd gone with the others.'
Breska grinned. 'I just wasn't as dumb as you. I hung behind till they were all outside, and then I barred the door. I'd seen you weren't dead, and—well, this cough's got me anyway, and I hate forced marches. They give me blisters.'
They grinned at each other. Tex said,
'We're a couple of damn fools, but I reckon we're stuck with it. Okay. Let's see how long we can fool 'em.' She got up, gingerly. 'The Skipper had some books in her quarters. Maybe one of 'em would tell what this dry stuff is.'
Breska coughed and nodded. 'I'll keep watch.'
Tex's throat burned, but she was afraid to drink. If the water evaporated in her mouth as it had in Kuna's. . . .
She had to try. Not knowing was worse than knowing. A second later she stood with an empty cup in her hand, fighting down panic.
Half the water had vanished before she got the cup to her mouth. The rest never touched her tongue. Yet there was nothing to see, nothing to feel. Nothing but dryness.
She turned and ran for Captain Smith's quarters.
Hertford's Jungles of Venus, the most comprehensive work on a subject still almost unknown, lay between Kelland's Field Tactics and Alice in Wonderland. Tex took it down, leafing through it as she climbed to the parapet.
'Here it is,' she said suddenly.' 'Dry Spots. These are fairly common phenomena in certain parts of the swamplands. Seemingly Nature's method for preserving the free oxygen balance in the atmosphere, colonies of ultra-microscopic animalcules spring up, spreading apparently from spores carried by animals which blunder into the dry areas.
' 'These animalcules attach themselves to hosts, inanimate or otherwise, and absorb all water vapor or still water nearby, utilizing the hydrogen in some way not yet determined, and liberating free oxygen. They become dormant during the rainy season, apparently unable to cope with running water. They expand only within definite limits, and the life of each colony runs about three weeks, after which it vanishes.' '
'The rains start in
about a week,' said Breska. 'Our relief can't get here under nine days. They can pick us off with snakes and beetle-bombs, or let us go crazy with thirst, let the first shower clear out the ani—the whatyoucallits, and move in. Then they can slaughter our girls when they come up, and have the whole of Venus clear.'
Tex told her about Kuna and the beetles. 'The snakes probably won't touch us, either.' She pounded a freckled fist on the stones. 'If we could find some way to drink, and if the guns and the net didn't rust, we might hold them off long enough.'
'If ,' grunted Breska. 'If we were in heaven, we wouldn't have to worry.'
* * *
The days that followed blurred into a daze of thirst and ceaseless watching. For easier defense, there was only one way down from the parapet through the net. They took the least rusted of the guns and filled the small gap. They could hold out there until they collapsed, or the net gave.
They wasted several quarts of water in vain attempts to drink. Then they gave it up. The final irony of it made Tex laugh.
'Here we are, being noble till it hurts, and it won't matter a damn. The Skipper was right. It's the rust that'll lose us Venus in the end—that, and these Dry Spots.'
Food made thirst greater. They stopped eating. They became mere skeletons, moving feebly in sweat-box heat. Breska stopped coughing.
'It's breathing dry air,' she said, in a croaking whisper. 'It's so funny I could laugh.'
A scarlet beetle crawled over Tex's face where she lay beside the Martian on the catwalk. She brushed it off, dragging weak fingers across her forehead. Her skin was dry, but not as dry as she remembered it after windy days on the prairie.
'Funny it hasn't taken more oil out of my skin.' She struggled suddenly to a sitting position. 'Oil! It might work. Oh, God, let it work! It must!'
Breska stared at her out of sunken eyes as she half fell down the steps. Then a sound overhead brought the Martian's gaze upward.
'A scout, Tex! They'll attack!'
Tex didn't bear her. Her whole being was centered on one thing—the thing that would mean the difference between life and death.
Dimly, as she staggered into the room where the oil was kept, Tex heard a growing thunder of wings. She groaned. If Breska could only hold out for a moment.
It took all her strength to turn the spigot of the oil drum. It was empty, All the stuff had been used to burn bodies. Almost crying, Tex crawled to the next one, and the next. It was the fourth drum that yielded black, viscous fluid.