Part 2
"Looking klambits!" Mouse Digby moaned. "The zips! They got Phorey and the jeep and the dandelions! Shook 'em to pieces!"
He pressed his mouth into a slit and started grimly forward. But Trixie's scream checked him.
"My dandelions! Gone! All gone! Just 'cause I wanted to be treated nice--"
Horseface said, "You see? That's what you get for being so foolish. And ain't us coming to fetch you kind of a compliment? It's sure took us a lot more effort than Goreck's sweet-talking did. You, Goreck, get out from behind a woman's skirts! That ain't no way for a gentleman to act!"
"Trixie, back up to the Fancy," Goreck snapped. "Hide me. Boyss," he squeaked, gesturing wildly, "let 'em have it!"
"No you don't! You ain't going to shoot my old pardners!" Trixie fumed, even as a number of rays from Martian blasters sang past. The Finchburgers ducked, not daring to shoot while Trixie was so near their targets.
She turned, swooped and had Goreck off the ground, high over her head and squawking. He didn't dare shoot her since she was his only hope of salvation, and the Martians didn't either.
They just stopped fighting.
Trixie walked Goreck over to Horseface and thumped him down on the dust. The rest of the Martians held a quick exchange of ideas limited strictly to gestures, and began to melt away from the scene.
"Fortune hunter! Deceiver!" Trixie bawled at Goreck who was already wretched enough with blasters poked in his face. "You promised me you'd do it all peaceful, and still you wanted to shoot my pardners! You treated me decent just to get my dandelions away from me! I been a fool," she sobbed at Horseface, grinding her fists in her eyes. She dropped her hands and snapped at Goreck, "And it was you what made me do it! I'll fix you for that! Out of my way, everybody!"
The Martians hiding in "The Martian's Fancy" and peeping from its windows let out a shriek as she started for the borer. They'd read her mind. They burst from the place like moths from an opened trunk, and instantaneously scattered all over the landscape.
"You boys watch Goreck," Trixie ordered the Finchburgers who had come on foot. "But you with the machines, come on--join the fun!"
The air not only was rent, but hamburgered as she turned on the borer's blast-ray full-strength and dragged it straight for "The Martian's Fancy". The mowing-machine chopped up a few street weeds before it began to cut and bale the houses. The psithium detectors hopped like kangaroos against the flimsy walls, battering them down. Goreck's protests were inaudible in the clangor of smashing dwellings and the crackle of crumbling masonry. His tears of frustration and fury made tiny mudpies in the dust.
"I guess that'll show you how a lady ought to be treated," Trixie observed rather enigmatically, but with grim satisfaction, after having done to his town everything that the old Assyrian conquerors had bragged about--except perhaps the piling up of human heads. "Now give him a send-off, boys!"
But their blasts at his feet couldn't possibly keep up with him. Maybe it was merely dust, but he ran so fast he seemed to smoke from friction.
"I guess nobody's going to like me no more, after what I went and done--losing my dandelions," Trixie sighed. They had started homeward, and she was riding behind Horseface on Elmer. Most of the pedestrians were riding the borer.
Horseface said, "We love you more than ever, Trix. We had to lose you before we could see what fools we been."
Horseface went on, "Don't worry about the dandelions. For one thing, while we was going through that tunnel you and Goreck made, we found a whopping big vein of psithium--big enough to start another rush! Now we can all go back to Terra if we want to--or if we stay, you can build a whole blooming conservatory!"
Trixie stopped sobbing. Elmer rejoiced, because from her hiccoughs he had felt as if she and Horseface had been dancing on his back.
Horseface said, "And anyway, your dandelions ain't lost. I knew it when I came chasing after you to the fork in the road. Phorey Yakkermunn the Martian was driving your jeep. Don't you remember what we used to call him? 'Ears', that's what--'Ears' Yakkermunn, 'cause being a Martian and coming from a planet with rarefied air like there is on Mars, his ears had to be extra big so they could catch sounds."
"What's that got to do with my dandelions?"
"Phorey never could get used to the heavy air we got here on Venus. It makes sounds too loud and hurts his ears. So he still does like he used to, he stuffs them with cotton. Goreck told him to take the dandelions to Saturday, didn't he? But with all that cotton in his ears, you know where he took 'em? To Satterlee!"
"Are you sure?"
"Positive! After we took the fork in the road, we was following borer-tracks, not tire-marks!"
She threw her heavy arms around him, planting a kiss full on his lips. It not only made him squirm, but reminded him of Candy Derain's suction cup bicycle. Candy probably had traveled a hundred miles or so by now--straight up and down again--and actually couldn't have gained more than a hundred feet straightaway.
"You're so resourceful, Horseface," Trixie breathed, with constellations rather than mere stars in her eyes. "You remind me of Mike. And I'm going to reward you for all you've done. I'm going to marry you!"
Horseface didn't dare to groan. While Trixie clamped a loving paw on his own hand almost squeezing it to pulp, he wished fervently that he was alone on the far hills--anywhere but here--looking for psithium nuggets.
But Trixie always had her way, and she wasn't going to stop having it now.
"You're so masterful!" she wheezed.
And even Elmer, looking back over his shoulder, hung his head and sighed.
* * * * *
_A COMMENT ON_ ONE TOUCH OF TERRA
_I have read Dr. Hannes Bok's ONE TOUCH OF VENUS, which appears elsewhere in this publication, with understandable interest. While I may deplore, as a cultural anthropologist, Dr. Bok's obvious empathy towards these miners with their socially regrettable attitude towards the original inhabitants, I must say that Dr. Bok paints quite an effective picture of living conditions in these scattered communities._
_I have been privileged, though, as I have said elsewhere, to visit with and spend considerable time with the natives who withdrew to the hills soon after our ships first landed._
_I have found these men and women extraordinarily hospitable, warm and friendly, once they sense that you do not come among them as a tourist._
_They have a very ancient culture, a rich language (with gradations similar to 20th century Javanese). Their chants are fantastic, long, mournful wails, whose shadings, whose tremolos, still inspire you and make you one with them. I hope to translate some of these chants in the near future, including one dedicated to the sacred sand-lillies, so erroneously called_ zips _by the miners_.
Vithaldas Hattopadhyaya O'Quinn Lecturer in Venusian Antiquities