Transcriber’s note: This story was published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, November 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. [86]Illustrated by Kelly Freas [ 86 ] The Hitch Hikers The Rell, a great and ancient Martian race, faced extinction when all moisture was swept from their planet.Then, one day, a lone visitor—a strange, two-legged creature composed mostly of water—landed on Mars … BY VERNON L. MC CAIN The dehydration of the planet had taken centuries in all. The Rell had still been a great race when the process started. Construction of the canals was a prodigious feat but not a truly remarkable one. But what use are even canals when there is nothing to fill them? T he dehydration What cosmic influences might have caused the disaster baffled even the group-mind of the Rell. Through the eons the atmosphere had drifted into space; and with it went the life-giving moisture. Originally a liquid paradise, the planet was now a dry, hostile husk. The large groups of Rell had been the first to suffer. But in time even the tiny villages containing mere quadrillions of the submicroscopic entities had found too little moisture left to satisfy their thirst and the journey ever southward toward the pole had commenced. The new life was bitter and difficult and as their resources were depleted so also did their numbers diminish. [87] [ 87
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