Part 2

Peetn's mind was in a turmoil as he grubbed in the desert sands at the base of the stubby, tree-like plant. He mechanically pulled up the bulbous roots, tearing them loose, but always leaving enough of a stem so that a new one would grow back on, but his thoughts were upon what the stranger had made known to him by the diagram he had drawn in the sand. This being was from Gamtl! Gamtl, the mythical Eden, the planet to which legend told all good Martians would go some day. Some day, it was said, the ghostly ships of space would return, and all Mars would be happy again. This monstrosity claimed to have come from there. Could this be the time of resurrection which Mars was promised by the old myth? How could this thick-tentacled, hideous-faced being bring Mars back to its old lost glory?

Such were Peetn's thoughts as he approached the water station with his pockets half full of _merrl_. The now familiar figure of the being from Gamtl stood atop the knoll beckoning to him.

They shook hands solemnly after Peetn had dumped his load of food, and the stranger drew Peetn over to a patch of cleared sand. Bending down, he drew with his finger a crude diagram of the water-station, pointing to it, and then to the reservoir, pump-cavern, and the valve-house, indicating each in the sand in turn. He then drew a line from the pump-cavern northward, and connected it to a large scrawl which Peetn decided was supposed to represent the ice-cap. He nodded his head in a gesture which he had learned from the Earthman, indicating that he understood, and that the diagram was right.

Clark then drew a line from the valve-house south. By means of much pointing and insistent signs, the Martian finally discovered that he wished to know where it led, and what was at the end.

Peetn jack-knifed his gangly legs and sank to his knees. The tip of his tentacles traced a picture in the sand. It looked like a series of small circles interlinked by little curved lines. Peetn pointed to himself, then at the circles. Then he made eighty-two little dashes in the sand.

The Earthman understood immediately. So that was it! This water-station supplied a colony of eighty-two Martians with drinking water, vital to their existence! They must live very far south near the equator, in the warmest zone of the planet, where food and heat were more abundant. Of course! And Beany was shipped up here as watchman. Clark looked with new respect at the Martian, thinking of the soul-deadening loneliness he must have known. He certainly wasn't much good as a mechanic; why, he couldn't even have known that the flow of water could be increased by opening those valves wider! Naturally, he had thought that Clark had tried to sabotage the plant when he had laid hands on the machinery. Those pumps--it was a wonder that they hadn't frozen stiff long before this.

Harrison Clark made up his mind.

Next morning when Peetn arose, the man from Gamtl was gone. So was a three-day supply of _merrl_ and water.

* * * * *

It was eight days later when the Martian emerged from the valve-house and saw the tiny figure come trudging out of the west. It was the alien, and behind him dragged a curious object, a black, cylinder-like affair trundling along on four wheels and pulled by a rope in the stranger's hands. Peetn stalked out to meet him and after they had shaken hands, he curled a few tentacles about the rope and together they pulled the mysterious object into the water-station. Peetn watched with his curiosity aroused as Clark heaved and grunted the thing down the thirty-one steps into the underground pump room, talking all the while.

"You know what this is, Beany, old boy?" he said. "It's oil--for the pumps. It'll take the squeaks out of 'em for a while anyway. It won't last forever, but before it's gone, maybe you and I can figure out something else. Lucky I had this barrel left on the ship. There!" He stood up and dusted off his hands. "If we can get those pumps to stop chattering, we can open up the valves and let a _real_ head of water through to your pals. Be afraid to do it with the things in this condition."

He unscrewed the cap and peered in, sniffing. He turned to the Martian with a broad grin.

"About three-quarters full," he announced, marking the level on the outside of the drum with his hand.

Peetn, deciding that the mystery had progressed just about far enough for his Martian tastes, stilted over and inserted his tube-like proboscis into the hole left by the screw cap, and inhaled. He straightened up abruptly and whistled, tears dropping from his yellow, sac-like eyes.

Clark laughed excitedly. "That's oil, you Beanpole! We're going to rebuild Mars with that drum! You poor guys must have had a hell of a time living in this hole," he continued, becoming serious and pensive and indicating the desert with a wave of his hand. "It would take one of you a life-time to find food enough to live that long. Your civilization has sunk right down to rock bottom, but I think we're going to change all that." He shook his head doubtfully. "It's according to how long we can make this oil last. Those machines which your ancestors made are the real McCoy, all right, but God knows how long they've been pounding away dry as a bone. The oil might pour out of every crack as fast as we pour it in. Well," he finished, shrugging his shoulders, "there's only one way of finding out!"

Carefully, lest he spill a drop of the priceless fluid, he filled a water container with the lubricant.

"Keep your tentacles crossed!" he shot at Peetn, who looked down upon him from his superior height as the Earthman slowly poured the contents of his container into the oil-cup on the main bearing of No. 1 pump. He allowed the dregs to drain into the capacious pocket and then bent with hands on knees, looking for signs of a leak below.

Peetn followed his every move tensely, wondering whether or not to force a halt to this tampering with the vital machines, but somehow he trusted this monster from Gamtl. He seemed to know what he was about, and there _was_ a chance that after he was through the disturbing noises in the machines would be gone. So he watched and waited, always on the alert to prevent any outright damage. He couldn't see, anyway, how pouring some of that evil-smelling stuff into those little cups would change anything.

And then suddenly, the song of the pumps changed! The thumping and creaking lessened to an almost imperceptible amount as a tiny ring of oil appeared around the periphery of the bearing. The pump rose to a new level of activity, the parts whirling and plunging at a greater speed. Peetn thrilled in surprise.

His interest increased ten-fold as Clark filled the cups on the other three pumps in turn. Each one's voice dropped from a shout to a whisper, and all chugged with more vigor under the relaxing influence of the lubricating oil. Peetn trembled all over as he noted that the protesting groans which had worried him so were gone. This was unbelievable! This stranger from Gamtl was indeed a friend!

"Our work isn't done, Beany," said Clark, as he dumped what was left of the oil back into the drum and wiped his hands in the sand. "The really important part is yet to come. This is just preparing; now we've got to knock those rusty valves loose from their eye-teeth!"

He screwed the barrel-cap back into place and, followed by Peetn whose animation was visibly increased over his usual lethargic, fatalistic state, he trod the stairs into the open air.

The Earthman gave a preliminary tug or two at the valve-wheels, and then muttered under his breath. Peetn scowled inwardly. It was not good, tampering with the machines. Then the Martian went all weak and fluttery inside as the stranger picked up a short metal bar which had been lying in a dusty corner and began banging on the tops of the machines! He was upon Clark like a flash, and the tendons in the Earthman's arms cracked agonizingly as the Martian giant wrested the bar away from him in mid-blow. Clark relaxed as the tense tableau threatened to continue for a protracted length of time.

"Look, Beany," he said pleadingly. "I'm only trying to jar the rust loose inside. Gimme back that thing and let me alone. I know what I'm doing."

The Martian, of course, didn't understand a word, and he stood toying with the length of metal rod, his yellow eyes blank and inscrutable. Then with a sudden gesture, he handed it back to Clark and extended a tentacle.

"He trusts me!" gasped the Earthman as he pumped the furry limb up and down enthusiastically.

Using the bar as a lever, he twisted the spoked wheel around several turns, watching the meters on the wall as the valve grated wider and wider. The indicator crept up and up, revealing the increased flow to Clark's anxious eyes. The noise from the pumps below drifting through the open archway thundered with new energy to catch up with the added drain on their powers. Trembling with triumph, he disentangled the bar from the spokes and turned the handle on the petcock from which Peetn drained their drinking water every morning. A stout stream as thick as his thumb spattered to the ground with a heavenly gurgling sound. Peetn's knees must have given way at the sight, for he folded up and sat down on the floor ungently, his eyes glued to that stream of life which issued from the pipette.

* * * * *

Several weeks later, Harry Clark stood by with an amused grin on his face as Peetn tweedled excitedly to the three Martians who had come stilting out of the south the evening before. The whistling of the Martians was less than gibberish to him, but he got the idea from the various tentacle-wavings and yellow-eyed stares in his direction that Peetn was giving them the dirt about himself.

And that was exactly what Peetn was doing.

"The monster is from Gamtl, the Paradise of the old legend," he was whistling. "Many days ago the wind blew him into the water-station, sick and dying from lack of life essentials. He was clad in the strange metal suit which you still see upon him. He is a very strange and alien being. It seems inexplicable, but I believe that he understands more about them than we for whom they exist. Well, one day in the valve-house, he laid tentacles on one of the machines, and I had to pull him bodily away from it. His interest did not carry him quite so far as that in succeeding days, but about a week later I arose in the morning to find him gone!

"His return, which I didn't expect, was the queerest sight I ever saw. He came across the desert at about midday, from the direction he first came, dragging behind him a cylindrical object which I later found to be hollow and filled with a very amazing liquid. He took this container down into the cavern of the chugging machines and unscrewed a small circular section in the top. I smelled its contents; it smelled like the juice of the _merrl_ plant when it was crushed, a very unpleasant odor, I assure you. It also had the same consistency and texture, as I discovered surreptitiously afterwards.

"Well, he poured some of it into the chugging machines, and the noises which they had been making--stopped! It was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced. He seemed to wield some un-Martian control over them!

"Then he did a thing which makes me shudder to recount! He picked up a bar of metal half as long as my tentacle and began belaboring the machines from which I had pulled him a few weeks before! Quickly I stopped him, but something, perhaps the memory of how he had quieted the chugging machines, told me that this being could be trusted, and that he knew what he was doing. I--I took an awful chance. I squirm inside when I think of what might have happened if my trust in this Gamtlian had been misplaced. I gave him back the bar and allowed him to continue!

"He stopped banging before he broke anything, and then he did a peculiar thing. He turned the outer edge of the round machines in there," Peetn indicated the valve-house, "so that the whole top moved around itself. Then the miracle happened."

"Yes, go on," twittered the other one excitedly. "What did he do?"

Peetn paused for a moment to gather weight, and then proceeded solemnly. "He opened the little machine from which I draw my drinking water, and a stream shot forth as thick as my tentacle and spattered all about the room!" He allowed himself to exaggerate. "An unbelievable quantity of water poured out in the short space of time that I watched it."

The newcomers seemed slightly disappointed at the tale Peetn told, expecting to hear about gigantic super-Martian operations by the stranger from Gamtl, the Martian spirit-world.

"Why that's just about what happened down at the colony, about the water, I mean," said one of them. "All of a sudden a flood came gushing out of the supply pipe and overflowed the pool and spreading out over the surrounding desert. A funny thing, too, was the way that the _merrl_ plants grew where the water had spread. When we left, our colony had a full fifteen days' stock, and all of it was gathered within a five-minute walk of the caves!"

Peetn had a faraway look in his usually inexpressive, yellow eyes. A quiver was noticeable in his whistle as he replied.

"Can this be the fulfilment of the old legend of Gamtl?" he asked. "Already we owe this alien much; our lives have been made easier to live. Who knows, with the awful burden of food-gathering and water-conserving lifted from our colony, we may be able to gain back some of the lost glory of our ancestors; may again be able to build water-stations and flash-guns! Yes, my friends, the day that stranger staggered into this water-station was the first day of the rebirth of Mars!"

* * * * *

Harrison Clark, for the first time since he had crashed on the Martian desert in the rocket, did not dream so longingly of Earth as he lay in the little hollow he had come to know as home. He had work to do here. A feeling of mingled exultation and determination had possessed him when Peetn had shown him the liquid which resulted from crushing _merrl_. It was a very heavy and durable vegetable oil, quite capable of continuing the job of lubricating the machinery after his petroleum was gone. Mars could be re-awakened with it; the task was his.

Then, too, some day another rocket might arrive from Earth, one that wouldn't crash. The American Rocket Society wouldn't give up because their first rocket failed to return. In examining the pumps a day or so ago, he thought he found what made them go. A small, ridiculously small box, no larger than his two fists fastened to the eccentric. Obviously atomic power, or something as efficient and ever-lasting. Earth could use something like that.

A sense of warmth and friendship suffused him, in spite of the frigid wind which blew all around, as he thought of the Martian monsters which lay sleeping beside him. They were _his_ people now! For when Peetn had stopped whistling to them, one by one they had filed past, and every damn one had shaken his hand!