s in the outcropping, some
ten feet below its peak and four feet above the ground, was a round
four-inch hole.

Allenby sat down on a rock, nursing his ankle, and remarked that anybody
who believed this crazy business was really happening must have holes in
the rocks in his head.

[Illustration]

Burton put his eye to the hole and whistled. "Sixty feet long if it's
an inch," he said. "The other end's just a pinpoint. But you can see it.
The damn thing's perfectly straight."

I looked back the way we had come. The cactus stood on the ridge, with
its U-shaped bite, and beyond was the ship, and beside it the perforated
rock.

"If we surveyed," I said, "I bet the holes would all line up right to
the last millimeter."

"But," Randolph complained, "why would anybody go out and bore holes in
things all along a line through the desert?"

"Religious," Janus muttered. "It doesn't _have_ to make sense."

* * * * *

We stood there by the outcropping and looked out along the wide, red
desert beyond. It stretched flatly for miles from this point, south
toward Mars' equator--dead sandy wastes, crisscrossed by the "canals,"
which we had observed while landing to be great straggly patches of
vegetation, probably strung along underground waterflows.

_BLONG-G-G-G- ... st-st-st- ..._

We jumped half out of our skins. Ozone bit at our nostrils. Our hair
stirred in the electrical uproar.

"L-look," Janus chattered, lowering his smoking gun.

About forty feet to our left, a small rabbity creature poked its head
from behind a rock and stared at us in utter horror.

Janus raised his gun again.

"Don't bother," said Allenby tiredly. "I don't think it intends to
attack."

"But--"

"I'm sure it isn't a Martian with religious convictions."

Janus wet his lips and looked a little shamefaced. "I guess I'm kind of
taut."

"That's what I _taut_," said Allenby.

The creature darted from behind its rock and, looking at us over its
shoulder, employed six legs to make small but very fast tracks.

We turned our attention again to the desert. Far out, black against
Mars' azure horizon, was a line of low hills.

"Shall we go look?" asked Burton, eyes gleaming at the mystery.

Janus hefted his gun nervously. It was still crackling faintly from the
discharge. "I say let's get back to the ship!"

Allenby sighed. "My leg hurts." He studied the hills. "Give me the
field-glasses."

Randolph handed t