The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hitch Hikers, by Vernon L. McCain

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Title: The Hitch Hikers

Author: Vernon L. McCain

Release Date: May 7, 2010 [EBook #32284]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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| |
| Transcriber's note: |
| |
| This story was published in _If: Worlds of Science Fiction_, |
| November 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any |
| evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was |
| renewed. |
| |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+

_Illustrated by Kelly Freas_

The Hitch Hikers

_The Rell, a great and ancient Martian race, faced extinction when
all moisture was swept from their planet. Then, one day, a lone
visitor--a strange, two-legged creature composed mostly of
water--landed on Mars..._

BY VERNON L. MC CAIN

The dehydration of the planet had taken centuries in all. The Rell had
still been a great race when the process started. Construction of the
canals was a prodigious feat but not a truly remarkable one. But what
use are even canals when there is nothing to fill them?

What cosmic influences might have caused the disaster baffled even the
group-mind of the Rell. Through the eons the atmosphere had drifted into
space; and with it went the life-giving moisture. Originally a liquid
paradise, the planet was now a dry, hostile husk.

The large groups of Rell had been the first to suffer. But in time even
the tiny villages containing mere quadrillions of the submicroscopic
entities had found too little moisture left to satisfy their thirst and
the journey ever southward towar