Like pioneers in Earth's past, Terry and his wife came to the red planet seeking their fortune. But others came too, ready to prove—

Death Walks On Mars

By Alan J. Ramm

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy February 1958 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

There was death above. The Martian Sand Vulture swooped and hissed and twitched its barbed, poisonous tail in the thin air.

There was death below. The man lay cradled in the pebbly sand. Red sand that matched the color of his hair and the color of the blood oozing slowly from the hole in his forehead and trickling greasily along the inside of his punctured head-bubble. The air whistled thinly through the corresponding hole in the bubble as the oxygen converter tried vainly to maintain the proper breathing mixture.

There was death in the muzzle of the gun dangling nonchalantly from the tall man's gloved hand. It grinned from his face, etched in the sardonic twist that the purple scar gave to his right cheek. It danced in the emotionless distances of his eyes.

There was death in every beat of Leeda Carson's heart. With the adaptability of a pioneer she accepted the fact of death; even that of her husband's. The last two long Martian years had tested Terry's and her love; refined it with hardships and discouragement. The menacing gun was an easy way to rejoin him. But it was too easy; too soft a response to unwarranted killing. With unrelenting determination, she kindled and fanned to life a fierce resolve that the three men before her would pay, as slowly and as painfully as possible, for what they had done.

Through lips necessarily stiff with the effort of controlled emotion, she asked, "Why did you kill him?"

"Didn't have anything against him, Ma'am. Had to do it. Showed we meant business. Easier to handle one than two of you anyway." The eyes of the tubby man who answered her kept flickering anxiously upward toward the Sand Vulture. "That thing as dangerous as they say?"

Leeda turned to the third and youngest man. His glance was fixed hypnotically on the death on the ground. His skin was pale and his forehead beaded with sweat. She repeated, "What did you do it for?"

"Got into trouble at Canalport. Heard a rumor that you and your husband had 

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