As for Sexton, he was as happy as a clam at high tide. He occupied himself studying the Martian flora and fauna, the language, and astronomy—he said he’d found that the planet had two tiny moons. He seemed perfectly content to remain here for the rest of his life.
But the ship’s stores of acceptable trade items were limited. Some of the men had had success exchanging their labor and entertainments, such as playing on the pennywhistle, for the Martian liquor and other sundries, but they couldn’t go on like this forever. Already, Kidd thought, the Martian with the hat was beginning to cast inhospitable looks upon them with his protuberant black eyes.
Kidd stood up from the fire pit and made his way across the crowded common room to where Sexton sat studying one of the Martian “books”—a long spool of thin steel etched with spindly writing. Martian steel was plentiful and much better than English steel, easily the equal of the best Spanish steel.
Sexton sat engrossed for some time before noticing Kidd’s presence. “I think this may be a verb,” he said, holding up an inscribed strip of metal.
“I have a question for you,” Kidd said. “Of natural philosophy.”
“Oh?”
“Come outside with me.”
The two of them drew cloaks about themselves—rich, soft cloaks of the brightly colored Martian fabrics—for the tiny weak sun was long vanished from the sky. The street outside was quiet and very dark, the Martians being generally stay-at-homes at night, and a million stars stared down unwinking.
“Which of them is the Earth?” Kidd asked, clouds of breath puffing from his mouth.
Sexton looked upward for a moment, then pointed. “Just beyond the eastern horizon, I believe. She should rise within the hour.”
“I see.” Kidd gazed in the indicated direction. “What would it take to get there?”
“New balloons, of course,” Sexton replied without hesitation. He’d plainly considered the question in detail already, if only as an intellectual exercise. “But there’s plenty of this fine fabric available.” He rubbed his cloak between two fingers. “Food and water can be obtained from the natives, likewise coal to heat air for the ascent. The biggest problem is replacing the masts.”
“Aye, the masts.” The Martians did not seem to use wood for construction at all. In this city of stone and steel, they’d seen no wood bigger than kindling.
“And repairing all the other damage from the crash. But the masts are the sticking point.” Sexton clapped Kidd on the shoulder. “Still, it’s not so bad here, eh? Now come inside. ’Tis cold.”
“In a moment,” Kidd replied.
While Sexton returned to his books, Kidd stared off to the east, as though he could will the bright blue star of Earth to rise more quickly.
Kidd grubbed through the box of knuckle-roots near the fire pit, looking for the ones that were the least scrawny and fibrous. The white, knobby roots were tough and flavorless, but the Martians too cared little for them; a hundredweight could be obtained for just a few hours’ labor. Kidd suspected the roots of being animal fodder but preferred not to inquire too deeply into the question. They were keeping him and his men alive.
The ship’s books and leather had all been eaten weeks ago, putting an end to trade for luxuries such as meat and rum and sweets. But water and wood had to be hauled on Mars as well as anywhere else, and the men, with the Earthborn muscles of able seamen, could lift and haul far more than any Martian. There were things to herd, which were nothing like sheep and yet acted very much like sheep, and the canals required constant maintenance. All this work kept them supplied with food, of a sort, and water and coal. But it was no life for a sailor.
Selecting several roots from the pile, Kidd prepared to roast them, but when he went to stoke the fire, he found the cloth basket that served as a coal scuttle empty. Kidd cursed; bad as they were when roasted, raw knuckle-roots were completely inedible. “Sexton,” he called, tossing the basket his way. “Bring us some coal from the pile, would you?”
While he waited for the coal, Kidd arranged the roots in the fire pit, bemoaning his fate. But by the time he’d placed the last root, Sexton and the coal had still not appeared. “Damn you, man,” he called over his shoulder, “what’s the delay?”
But Sexton did not reply, and was nowhere to be seen.
Sighing with exasperation at the easily distracted philosopher, Kidd rose and stalked into the next room, where he found Sexton standing by the coal pile with the half-filled basket at his feet, staring with great intensity at a lump of coal. “Surely,” Kidd snapped, “you can leave off your studies for five minutes for the sake of our supper?”
In reply, Sexton thrust the filthy thing into Kidd’s hands. “What think you of this?”
The black lump was not coal at all but wood covered in coal dust. The Martians used small fragments of wood as kindling; this lump was much bigger than those, nearly as large as a fist, but apart from that it was not unusual. “It’s wood,” Kidd said with a shrug. “What of it?”
“The rings, man! Look at the rings!”
Kidd rolled his eyes, then peered closer … and his heart began to race. “From the curvature … this must have come from a tree at least three feet in diameter.”
“Exactly!” Sexton pointed to several similar lumps in the cloth basket. “And these are the same. Yet there’s not a tree to be seen anywhere near here.” He picked up a chunk of wood and held it up between them. “We must discover their source!”
Kidd slogged to the top of a dune, surveying the horizon ahead through his telescope. “Nothing!” he called to Sexton. “Not a damned thing.”
Not awaiting a response, he headed back down the dune, his feet sending cascades of the fine, cold sand sliding toward where Sexton sat rubbing his feet.
The natural philosopher’s face showed vexation and exhaustion both. “I would have sworn that adjective he used indicated a distance of between two and ten miles.” He took a drink from his waterskin. “My water’s over half-gone. Perhaps we should turn back.”
Kidd looked back along the well-trodden track they’d followed for the past four hours, then forward to where it vanished around a curve. “You’re certain he indicated this path? And that he understood what you were looking for?”
Sexton shrugged. “It’s a pox’d difficult language.”
Kidd took a sip of water, shielding his eyes against the sun, and considered their situation. It was nearly noon, and all they’d seen in four hours of walking was endless sand and mineral formations that had once seemed exotic. Though his own waterskin was not as depleted as Sexton’s, he too was tempted to abandon this snipe hunt. Yet it was the only hope they had.
He stared out across the desert. So much like an ocean, yet red and dry and motionless. And, unlike the sea, with its constant rush of wind and wave, oppressively silent.
No … not quite silent. Could that be …?
“My feet are—” Sexton began.
“Hush!” Kidd snapped, and cut him off with a gesture.
Kidd listened hard. And heard a sound he’d not heard in many months.
Axes. Axes chopping wood. The sound had been hidden from them before by the noise of their own feet on the sand.
They hurried forward, around the curve, and soon found themselves on the edge of a canyon perhaps two hundred feet deep. They’d been only a few hundred yards from it and had not even suspected its existence. A sandy track, apparently carved from the canyon wall by Martians, switchbacked down from the desert’s surface. And at the bottom …