Part 2

Brian's arms went around her. "This is the best way, Selo. He'll make trouble. It's not going to be pleasant. Let me get rid of the stones first and then you and I can start out together."

She buried her face in his chest. "I'm so afraid--here alone with him."

Brian tilted her chin up to face him. "There's no reason to be afraid of him. I know his kind. He only talks about things he could do. He won't hurt you. He wouldn't dare."

They were lost in each other's arms as Yancey turned and silently slipped back through the vac-lock. When he noisily re-entered a half hour later his plans were made.

If Brian was surprised by Yancey's sudden change in attitude, he gave no indication. He accepted Yancey's solicitous interest as lightly as he had his surly resentment earlier.

Dinner, the evening before Brian was to set out for Athens, was an hilarious affair on the surface. Yancey insisted on toasting Brian, on exacting a promise that he would come back to visit them. He assured the prospector that they would miss him and that he must consider the humidi-hut his home when he was on Venus.

Brian seemed to accept Yancey's protestations as genuine. Selo regarded her husband with quiet suspicion.

The next morning Yancey made all the preparations for Brian's departure. He had painstakingly drawn a detailed map of the route to Athens. He personally chose a new plasti-shield to protect Brian from the pelting of the dust and sand. Finally he filled the two thermiteens with their precious supply of water.

Finishing up this last chore in the little lab which housed the water supply, he smiled to himself, for he knew that Brian was using his absence from the living-room to pay Selo a fond farewell.

Only as the vac-lock closed on Brian and the indicator showed them he had left the humidi-hut did Yancey relax. He leaned against the door and smiled at Selo.

"So," he half-whispered, "your lover's gone. But he promised you that he'd come back for you, didn't he? Didn't he?"

For a moment Selo met his gaze. Then, she turned and started toward the kitchen.

"I wouldn't leave just yet," he taunted. "I wouldn't leave until you hear why he isn't coming back for you. Doesn't that interest you?"

* * * * *

She stopped, not turning, her back rigid. "I thought you'd change your mind," Yancey went on. "I thought you'd like to know why you can't count on seeing Mr. Brian Daniels again."

He laughed, and the sound was like a bad smell in the close little hut. "The thermiteens are punctured," he giggled. "The water your lover needs is already evaporated. When he wants it, in three or four hours, those thermiteens won't even be moist. He won't be able to keep on to the auxiliary cache. And he won't be able to come back here."

She was moving toward him. "You saw the quollas. You're killing him to get the jewels."

"That's only part of it," he countered savagely. "He deserved to die for many reasons."

With the quick grace of a Martian feline, she started to slip past him to the vac-lock. He caught her arm and twisted it behind her back. She cried out in pain, struggling with a ferocity he hadn't expected. After a moment he succeeded in throwing her to the floor.

"You can't save him," he panted. "Nothing can save him. You're going to sit here with me, Selo, and wait for the desert to kill your lover." Again he laughed. "It won't take long."

All that day and night they watched each other. And the time dragged by, Yancey's excitement increased. Selo, on the other hand, seemed to shrink within herself. It was almost as if in contemplating Brian's death she was dying herself.

Shortly after noon the next day, Yancey set out from the humidi-hut with four thermiteens. Two were full of water and two were empty.

He found Brian's body a little more than an hour's walk from the humidi-hut. Obviously, the prospector had discovered the punctured thermiteens and started back, but the desert moved in for its kill. He had crawled into the shelter of a pile of twisted rock, and with the punctured thermiteens in one hand and the quolla stones in the other, he had died.

Quickly, Yancey substituted the two empty but sound thermiteens he had brought with him for the tell-tale murder-tins. The quolla stones he dropped into the pocket of his asbesticoat.

With a final glance at the shrivelled thing that had once been Brian Daniels, he turned back to the humidi-hut.

He could feel Selo's eyes upon him that evening as he sat polishing the quolla stones. Each time he glanced up from his work she was staring at him.

"Selo," he said at last, continuing his work with the stones, "I hope you're not thinking of revenge."

She made no answer.

"If you ever went to the authorities with your wild story you'd be put in prison for the rest of your life. I'd see to that. No one would take the word of a Venusian against that of an Earthman."

She only stared at the floor.

Carefully, he deposited the gleaming quolla stones in the chamois bag he had bought for just this happy moment.

"Brian Daniels never reached this humidi-hut. Understand? Never reached it. We found him out there, poor fellow, but there was nothing we could do for him. That's the story. Is it clear?"

Her voice seemed to come from a great distance.

"It's clear."

"I'm going to Athens. I'll sell these quolla stones. In good time we'll leave this place. We might even go to another planet. How would you like that, Selo?"

Each word fell with the precision of a stone into water. "That would be very nice."

He rose and walked over to her. "In time, you'll forget him." It was not a positive statement. It was a half-question, as if Yancey were admitting that this was no more than a wish on his part.

Surprisingly, she nodded. "He will be forgotten," she answered.

This was an unexpected victory. It so pleased Yancey that he made her a present of one of the smaller quolla stones as a token of their new understanding.

She was very good to him that night.

* * * * *

Yancey could scarcely wait to be off the following morning. This day would stand out in bold relief against all the gray, futile days of his past. This was the day that would see the beginning of a new and happier life for Yancey Ritter.

Selo helped him make ready and listened with unusual attentiveness to all his instructions. He had his plasti-shield? Yes. The two thermiteens she had filled? Yes. The chamois bag with the quolla stones? Of course.

She permitted him to kiss her and then stood watching as he stepped toward the vac-lock.

Abruptly he turned and stood, hands on his hips, laughing at her. It was a hollow, mirthless, mocking laughter.

"You fool," he roared. "You stupid little fool of a woman. Did you think you could kill ME--Yancey Ritter--with the same trick I used on Daniels? Giving me these punctured thermiteens!" He threw them with a crash at her feet and stepped threateningly toward her.

"Yancey," she cried, and his heavy fist caught her on the side of the head and sent her sprawling to the floor.

"You don't fool me," he said, looking at her. "I'm not a blind fool like Daniels. This is my round to win and I won't be stopped." He turned and strode into the lab for fresh thermiteens.

She was still sprawled in the same spot when he returned. "I'm not finished with you," he snarled. "We'll finish the payment when I get back from Athens."

And with that he disappeared into the vac-lock.

Resolutely, he strode through the flying dust, eyes set on the orange orb that was the sun. A slow steady gait, he had found, was the most practical way to cover distance in the shifting blood dust of the Desert Rouge.

As the morning advanced, the winds that drove the sand seemed to increase in their elemental fury. The sun was all but blotted out and the dust swirled and eddied in an orange and red kaleidescope. It was as if some giant stood and threw great fistfuls of choking sand at Yancey.

He touched the cool water in the thermiteen to his lips often and each time he drank he half-laughed aloud, remembering the disappointment on Selo's face when she saw her trick was discovered.

He skirted wide around the rocks where he had found Brian. No reason to spoil the day by a second glimpse of that grisly sight.

Once or twice it seemed to him that he was being followed but he dismissed the notion as nerves.

Perhaps, he thought, it's Daniels' ghost. And with a harsh laugh he toasted Daniels' ghost in the cool water. He toasted Selo and the commandant and the quolla merchant who would soon give him a fortune for the stones in the chamois bag.

The wind clawed at him with gritty fingers and his boots seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the yielding dust. Every step was an effort and he could feel the slow encroachment of dehydration.

At the auxiliary water cache he promised himself he would use a little of the water to dampen his face.

He finished the last of his water in the thermiteens about nine hours after he had left the humidi-hut. He had drunk more than usual but he decided that his thirst had been aggravated by the storm.

The familiar marker that stood guard over the auxiliary water supply loomed through the shifting murk. He half ran the last few yards, feeling already the soothing coolness of the dampened cloth against his fevered cheek.

He stopped a few paces from the water cache and stared.

The door of the little thermi-safe stood open and there in the drifting dust lay the emptied auxiliary water kegs.

He threw himself to the ground and seized one of the emptied containers. The dust around it was still moist. Someone, short minutes ago, had broken into this cache and deliberately emptied the water into the dust. Someone....

"Selo!" he half-screamed and staggered to his feet. "Selo," he cried, and remembered his sense of being followed.

Was it the wind among the tortured rocks, or did he hear a high-pitched woman's laugh?

"Selo," he shouted, "I didn't mean to hit you! Selo, you've got to help me!"

Silence.

He began to run.

Exhausted as he was, he must have run for nearly an hour before the unbearable burden of his thirst pushed him down into the granular cushion of the Desert Rouge. A million orange and red parasites clustered on his body and drew out the last drop of his vitality.

* * * * *

Morrissey sighed and stepped closer to the Venusian woman. He felt sure that the clever technicians in Athens would get no story from her.

Two accidental deaths. That would be the verdict.

Morrissey took Selo's arm as she half-stumbled in the shifting dust.

Two men dead--wind-dried mummies fallen in the wastes of the Desert Rouge.

Victims of the desert? Or victims of a woman with deep-set violet eyes and blue-black hair?