Part 2

Tis and Thod cleared out the soggy passages that underlay the floating island and found a way that led to the upstream side. Five of the many-legged _traks_ they encountered and killed with the thrust of a shortened spear or a skilfully wielded knife, shoving the gruesome lizard carcasses into the gaping watery pits that opened along the low tunnels they traversed.

Rurak left Elko to guard Nitha and crept on hands and knees after the two Yzaps. He came up with them just as they had pierced an eyehole through the living wall of the island's upper side.

"Jokar Ged is being beaten!" Tis clicked. "More of the Swamp Dwellers are coming from the island and from the swamps. There are many of them. They kill the Yzaps of Jokar Ged with spears and fishing harpoons.

"Jokar Ged is wounded! Blood, red blood, comes from his body! His boats are turning.... They paddle away up the river. Spears thrown by the Swamp People strike among them.... A boat overturns...."

"Let me see, Tis," ordered Rurak.

A glimpse of the fleeing knot of dugouts, five of them now, with the circling score or more bowl-boats closing in, was all that Rurak could see before the wedge-shaped arm of jungle just upstream blotted out vision. He saw Jokar Ged sagging weakly in one of the fleeing boats, the spear that had wounded him yet hanging in the wound.

Then he saw the overturned dugout drifting toward the island. He turned to the Earthmen.

"Could one of you swim out there and steer that boat around to the lower side of the island?" he demanded.

"Yes, Nidan," clicked Thod and with a slash of his crude stone knife he made an opening and was gone.

Rurak waited until he saw the derelict craft shift its drifting course and move away downriver and then he led the way back to the others. If they could sink the boat or conceal it under the bulk of the island until darkness came....

* * * * *

"A close shave that," Elko Sohm growled as he paddled the boat along a salty watercourse parallel with the Great Sea, "if the Yzaps had come back before Thod reached us and we hid the boat we would all be dead. I'm thinking yet we should have remained on the hilltop. A foolhardy undertaking this."

"All that happened a week ago," Nitha laughed up into Elko's stubby, filthy, moon of a face, "and still you're grumbling. We got away didn't we?"

"Almost there," Rurak said to Elko. "Around the second loop ahead of us lies the edge of the crystalline horde near which we landed. Before long we will be with our friends and then back to Mars. Home again, Elko!"

Abruptly the ominous hushed sounds of the swamplands, the hum of insects and the raucous cries of the flying lizards among the treetops, was smashed across by a vast explosion. It was a continuous explosion that swelled louder as it continued, a rapid series of controlled blasts.

"The _Tekna_!" cried Rurak in despair, "blasting off for Mars!"

A long gleaming pencil of metal soared on a long slant into the sky overhead; the flame of her rocket jets boomed a thunderous farewell, and then the _Tekna_ was gone.

Half-heartedly the five passengers of the little dugout took up their makeshift paddles and held to their course. At least there would be the plastic dome they had erected beside the _Tekna_ to prevent the overcrowding of the ship and perhaps there would be a stock of provisions and weapons left behind for Rurak if he should ever find his way back to the coast.

The dome was still standing although blackened somewhat by the blast of the takeoff.

Into the dome the Martians hurried to find it well stocked with all sorts of provisions and equipment. There was a message left there too in a heavy transparent case bolted to one of the uprights supporting the dome.

"Listen to this, Nitha!" cried Rurak. "They made contact with your father's crew after all. The time was too near for them to wait for us--the New Year you know--so they blasted off for Mars with your father. And next year, or the year after, another expedition will come to Earth. Until then...."

"Yes," asked Nitha, smiling, "until then?"

Rurak felt the warmth of her woman's body beside him as he looked around the snug little dome. Tis and Thod were clicking softly together near the entrance and Elko Sohm was squinting along the sights of an automatic rocket rifle.

"Two more years in this blue hell," he groaned hopelessly. "An old man like me abandoned here on this sponge of a world!"