laugh too, from pure happiness. He squeezed her
hand and she squeezed back.

His laughter went into quick silence as he saw the tube of the needle
ray gun projecting past the rear tire of the desert car. The bright,
baleful eye of a Martian crouching there was visible behind the weapon.

"It's a trap!" he gasped. "They ran on purpose, knowing we would beat it
to our car as soon as they were gone."

Skidding to a halt, he tried to bring the Rangeley off his shoulder. The
needle ray gun winked at him. He coughed and went down in the sand.

The gun winked again, spitting its bright eye of light at the girl. She
went down like a falling doll.

McLean pulled himself up on one knee and one hand. There was a hole in
his chest as big as his fist, but there was no pain. The high energy
radiation from the needle gun seared the nerve endings so that no
sensations were transmitted.

The roustabout shook his fist at the native crouched under the car.

"You got us this time," he yelled. "But we'll be back again. You can't
lick us. We'll get you if it takes another million years." The drive
that had brought _homo sapiens_ up from the mud flats was in his voice.

His head began to swim. He took another deep breath. Beside him, the
girl lay completely silent. Only her eyes showed that she knew what had
happened.

McLean looked at her. There was still something that he wanted to say.
His mind was fogging and he had difficulty in finding the words.

"The next time through, I want to meet you earlier," he said at last. "I
want us to have the chance we missed this trip, of a home and a bunch
of--" He coughed. "And a bunch of kids," he ended.

The girl said nothing. She was beyond the ability to speak. But she
understood him. The glow that came into her eyes made them as beautiful,
and as full of promise, as the skies of Earth.

McLean quietly laid down.

The returning tribesmen danced their wild victory dance around the two
humans. Level and bare, the endless sands of Mars stretched far away.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Next Time We Die, by Robert Moore Williams

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEXT TIME WE DIE ***

***** This file should be named 32683.txt or 32683.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/6/8/32683/

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

U