“Yeah. We've got a spaceship to catch.” Andrew climbed into the sand-car, leaning out to grasp Kamellin's paw—sensing that the Martian would understand the gesture, if not the words. “Goodbye, Kamellin. Good luck to all of you."
He cut the rockets in and shot away in a thunderstorm of sand. He drove fast and dangerously. He would never see Shein-la Mahari again. He would leave Mars, probably forever. And forever he would be alone....
“They'll make out,” said Reade gruffly, and put an arm around his shoulders. To his intense horror, Andrew discovered that he was blinking back scalding tears.
“Sure,” he made himself say. “In a few hundred years they'll be way ahead of Earth. Look what seventy-odd pilgrims did in North America, on our own planet! Synthetics—power—maybe even interstellar travel. They'd visited Earth once, before the plagues that killed them, Kamellin told me."
The sand-car roared around the rock-wall and Shein-la Mahari was gone. Behind them Andrew heard a rumble and a dull, groundshaking thunder. The pass behind them crashed in ruin; the Ridge was impassable again. Kamellin and his Martians would have their chance, unmolested by Earthmen, for at least a few years—
“I wonder,” Reade mused, “which race will discover the other first...?"
* * *
Visit www.mzbworks.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.
Measureless to Man Page 5
