The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hunted Heroes, by Robert Silverberg

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Title: The Hunted Heroes

Author: Robert Silverberg

Release Date: May 27, 2008 [EBook #25627]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE
HUNTED
HEROES

By ROBERT SILVERBERG

_The planet itself was tough enough--barren, desolate,
forbidding; enough to stop the most adventurous and
dedicated. But they had to run head-on against a mad
genius who had a motto:_

_Death to all Terrans!_

"Let's keep moving," I told Val. "The surest way to die out here on Mars
is to give up." I reached over and turned up the pressure on her oxymask
to make things a little easier for her. Through the glassite of the
mask, I could see her face contorted in an agony of fatigue.

And she probably thought the failure of the sandcat was all my fault,
too. Val's usually about the best wife a guy could ask for, but when she
wants to be she can be a real flying bother.

It was beyond her to see that some grease monkey back at the Dome was at
fault--whoever it was who had failed to fasten down the engine hood.
Nothing but what had stopped us _could_ stop a sandcat: sand in the
delicate mechanism of the atomic engine.

But no; she blamed it all on me somehow: So we were out walking on the
spongy sand of the Martian desert. We'd been walking a good eight hours.

"Can't we turn back now, Ron?" Val pleaded. "Maybe there isn't any
uranium in this sector at all. I think we're crazy to keep on searching
out here!"

I started to tell her that the UranCo chief had assured me we'd hit
something out this way, but changed my mind. When Val's tired and
overwrought there's no sense in arguing with her.

I stared ahead at the bleak, desolate wastes of the Martian landscape.
Behind us somewhere was the comfort of the Dome, ahead nothing but the
mazes and gullies of this dead world.

[Illustration: He was a cripple in a wheelchair--helpless as a
rattle