Forcing stiff lips apart, Tex drank.
If there'd been anything in her, she'd have vomited. The vile stuff coated lips, tongue, throat. Outside, Breska's gun cut in sharply. Tex dragged herself to the water tank.
'Running water,' she thought. Tilting her head up under the spigot, she turned the tap. Water splashed out. Some of it hit her skin and vanished. But the rest ran down her oil-filmed throat. She felt it, warm and brackish and wonderful, in her stomach.
She laughed, and let go a cracked rebel yell. Then she turned and lurched back outside, toward the steps.
The net sagged to the weight of white-haired warriors and roaring lizards. Breska's gun choked and stammered into silence. Tex groaned in utter agony.
It was too late. The rust had beaten them.
Her freckled, oil-smeared face tightened grimly. Drawing her gun, she charged the steps.
'Where the hell did you go?' snarled Breska. 'The ammo belt jammed.' She grabbed for the other gun set in the narrow gap.
Then it wasn't rust! And Tex realized something else. There were no rust flakes failing from the net.
Something had stopped the rusting. Before, her physical anguish had been too great for her to see that the net strands grew no thinner, the gun-barrels no rustier.
Scraps of the explanation shot through Tex's mind. Breska's cough stopping because the air was dried before it reached her lungs. Dry stone. Dry clothing.
Dry metal! The water-eating organisms kept the surface dry. There could be no rust.
'We've licked 'em, Breska! By God, we've licked 'em!' She shouldered the Martian out of the way, gripped the triggers of the gun. Shouting over the din, she told Breska how to drink, sent her lurching down the steps. She could hold the gap alone for a few minutes.
Looking up, Tex found him, swooping low over the fight, his silver hair flying in the wind. Tex shouted at him.
'You did it! You outsmarted yourself, lady. You showed us the way!'
Scientists could find out how to harness the Dry Spots to keep off the rust, and still let the soldiers drink.
And some day the swamps would be drained, and women and men would find new wealth, new life, new horizons here on Venus.
Breska came back, grinning, and fought the jam out of the gun. White bodies began to pile up, mixed with the saurian carcasses of their war-dogs. And presently the notes of the war-chief's horn drifted down, and the attackers faded back into the swamps.
And suddenly, wheeling his mount away from the others, the warrior man swooped low over the parapet. Tex held her fire. For a moment she thought he was going to dash his lizard into them. Then, at the last second, he pulled her up in a thundering climb.
His face was a cut-pearl mask of fury, but his pale-green eyes held doubt, the beginning of an awed fear. Then he was gone, bent low over him mount, his silver hair hiding his face.
Breska watched his go. 'For Mars,' she said softly. Then, pounding Tex on the bosom until she winced.
Two voices, cracked, harsh, and unmusical, drifted after the retreating form of the white-haired war-chief.
'Oh, bury us not on the lone prairie-e-e. . . .'
THE END
Artwork by Mark Sebastian
https://www.flickr.com/photos/markjsebastian/3001326701/in/faves-jekkarapress/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
JEKKARA PRESS
You can find out more about the Adventures of Bulays and Ghaavn at the Jekkara Press wordpress website:
https://jekkarapress.wordpress.com
or the blogger website:
https://jekkarapress.blogspot.com
You can find all of the Adventures of Bulays and Ghaavn as well as The Gender Switch Adventures at :
Coming Soon
The Adventures of Bulays and Ghaavn
15 I, Lysithea: The Karshi Imperative Part 3 - Tara Loughead
The Gender Switch Adventures
The Rebel of Valkyr Returned – Alfreda Coppel
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