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 

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