I think I can make it all right. We’ll both take different air-sleds. See you.”

Ward yelled—but Red was gone in the bedlam. But what could he have said? How could he have objected? It was logically the best way. He trusted Red because he had to. Ward fought his way through the yammering crowds, got his pressure suit, entered an air-lock and climbed into the spherical cramped interior of a jam-packed air-sled.

The Ensign at the controls was visibly trembling. Two ancient dowagers were hysterically screaming like frightened parrots. A chubby, bejeweled Martian Monel Metals representative was taking para-pills to quiet his nerves, enough to kill a horse. He passed out. The daughter of Vasco Von Belscon, who practically owned the Space Lines, was clinging to a young man who was, in turn, clinging to someone else and mumbling fearfully about the obviously untrue axiom that everything would be all right.

“This—this sled is overcrowded,” quavered the Ensign. “Be calm and don’t try to cause trouble. We’ll be lucky if we don’t smash up. I don’t think our levitation plates are sufficiently heterodyned for this great a load. And there’s no adjustment can be made at this short notice.”

“See here,” yelled Ward, “why commit suicide then?”

The Ensign turned a wan face. “I’ll try to coast her in. Perhaps the balance is such that a long trajectory and a crash landing is possible.”

Then the single light in the air-lock flashed twice. The lock opened, and the air-sled catapulted out with the outrushing atmosphere. Awed, helpless screams reverberated through the jammed interior as they watched the upward hurtling ball of Mars. A reddish crescent blur, with directly below a wide long crimson streak; to the side was the fading radiance of Deimos’ disc, while to the other side the planet seems to slumber in a darkness more profound than that of oceanic space, the black tomb where Phobos had just died.

The many air-sleds disgorged by the Sol were scattered so that only one or two others were visible in the far distance. And plunging down and away in a smoking trajectory that would take it almost clear around the planet, the Sol was crashing to her doom.

And, as far as Ward was concerned, so was the air-sled.

The geography of Mars was discernible. Ward saw the dead sea bottoms of Barsoom, soon obliterated by mountains; the rusted tundras of 

 Prev. P 15/24 next