against the cruel environment, stirred in his
blood. As the sun went down and the stars blossomed forth in awesome
frosty glory, Kreega began to think again.

He did not hate his persecutor, but the grimness of Mars was in him.
He fought the war of all which was old and primitive and lost in its
own dreams against the alien and the desecrator. It was as ancient and
pitiless as life, that war, and each battle won or lost meant
something even if no one ever heard of it.

_You do not fight alone_, whispered the desert. _You fight for all
Mars, and we are with you._

Something moved in the darkness, a tiny warm form running across his
hand, a little feathered mouse-like thing that burrowed under the sand
and lived its small fugitive life and was glad in its own way of
living. But it was a part of a world, and Mars has no pity in its
voice.

Still, a tenderness was within Kreega's heart, and he whispered gently
in the language that was not a language, _You will do this for us? You
will do it, little brother?_

* * * * *

Riordan was too tired to sleep well. He had lain awake for a long
time, thinking, and that is not good for a man alone in the Martian
hills.

So now the rockhound was dead too. It didn't matter, the owlie
wouldn't escape. But somehow the incident brought home to him the
immensity and the age and the loneliness of the desert.

It whispered to him. The brush rustled and something wailed in
darkness and the wind blew with a wild mournful sound over faintly
starlit cliffs, and it was as if they all somehow had voice, as if the
whole world muttered and threatened him in the night. Dimly, he
wondered if man would ever subdue Mars, if the human race had not
finally run across something bigger than itself.

But that was nonsense. Mars was old and worn-out and barren, dreaming
itself into slow death. The tramp of human feet, shouts of men and
roar of sky-storming rockets, were waking it, but to a new destiny, to
man's. When Ares lifted its hard spires above the hills of Syrtis,
where then were the ancient gods of Mars?

It was cold, and the cold deepened as the night wore on. The stars
were fire and ice, glittering diamonds in the deep crystal dark. Now
and then he could hear a faint snapping borne through the earth as
rock or tree split open. The wind laid itself to rest, sound froze to
death, there was only the hard clear starlight falling through space
to shatter on the