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.

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