o form the sugar.

"I don't get it," I said politely, when he'd finished his spiel.

"Simple," he said, as though he were addressing me by name. "They have a
twofold reason to fear water. One: by complete solvency in that medium,
they lose all energy and die. Two: even partial sprinkling alters the
shape of the scales, and they are unable to use sunpower to form more
sugar, and still die, if a bit slower."

"Oh," I said, taking it down verbatim. "So now what do we do?"

"We remove our boots," said Kroger, sitting on the ground and doing so,
"and then we cross this stream, fill the boots with water, and _spray_
our way to freedom."

"Which tunnel do we take?" asked Pat, his eyes aglow at the thought of
escape.

Kroger shrugged. "We'll have to chance taking any that seem to slope
upward. In any event, we can always follow it back and start again."

"I dunno," said Jones. "Remember those _teeth_ of theirs. They must be
for biting something more substantial than moss, Kroger."

"We'll risk it," said Pat. "It's better to go down fighting than to die
of starvation."

The hell it is.

* * * * *

_June 24, 1961, for sure_

The Martians have coal mines. _That's_ what they use those teeth for. We
passed through one and surprised a lot of them chewing gritty hunks of
anthracite out of the walls. They came running at us, whistling with
those tubelike tongues, and drooling dry coal dust, but Pat swung one of
his boots in an arc that splashed all over the ground in front of them,
and they turned tail (literally) and clattered off down another tunnel,
sounding like a locomotive whistle gone berserk.

We made the surface in another hour, back in the canal, and were lucky
enough to find our own trail to follow toward the place above which the
jeep still waited.

Jones got the rifles out of the stream (the Martians had probably
thought they were beyond recovery there) and we found the jeep. It was
nearly buried in sand, but we got it cleaned off and running, and got
back to the ship quickly. First thing we did on arriving was to break
out the stores and have a celebration feast just outside the door of the
ship.

It was pork again, and I got sick.

* * * * *

_June 25, 1961_

We're going back. Pat says that a week is all we were allowed to stay
and that it