corny
notion, but the basis for it remained sound. Mars was a dying world.
Couldn't the Martians still want a new planet to move to?

All these old thoughts popped back into my head during that very bad
moment. And if I was almost going for my pistol, how much worse was it
for Craig, Klein and Miller, who hadn't been as friendly with Etl as I
had been? Maybe we should have put our weapons out of our own reach,
in preparation for this incident. Then there would have been no danger
of our using them.

But any freedom of action was swiftly wrested from us. The Martians
rolled over us in a wave. Thousands of dark tendrils with fine,
sawlike spines latched onto our bodies. I was glad that I wore a
spacesuit, as much from the revulsion I felt at a direct contact as
for the small protection it gave against injury.

* * * * *

I am sure that there was panic behind that wild Martian rush. To get
us pinned down and helpless quickly, they drove themselves in spite of
their own fear of the horrid human forms. For did I feel a tremor in
those tendrils, a tendency to recoil from me? I was trembling and
sweating. Still, my impressions were vivid. Those monsters held us
down as if they were Malay beaters holding down trapped pythons. Maybe
they had known beforehand what men looked like--from previous, secret
expeditions to Earth. Just as we had known about Martians from Etl.
But it wouldn't have made any difference.

Or perhaps they weren't even aware that we were from the neighboring
planet. But it would be obvious that we were from another world;
nothing from their own planet could be so strange.

Our own reactions to the situation differed a little. Craig gasped
curses through his helmet phones. Miller said, "Easy, men! Easy!" It
was as if he were trying to build up his own morale, too. I couldn't
utter a sound.

It wasn't hard for our captors to recognize our weapons. We were
disarmed. They carried us out into the night and around a hill. We
were piled onto a flat metallic surface. A vehicle under us began to
throb and move; you could have called it a truck. The nature of its
mechanism was hinted at only by a small, frosty wisp of steam or vapor
up front. Perhaps it came from a leak. The Martians continued to hold
us down as savagely as ever. Now and then a pair of them would join
the nerve-ends of tendrils, perhaps to converse. Others would chirp or
hoot for no reason that I could understand