had come leaping from behind; as I
crashed down I saw him flash over me straight toward--toward what I'd
been running to, with his vicious beak pointed right at her heart!"

"Oh!" nodded the captain. "_Her_ heart!"

"Never mind that. When I scrambled up, that particular image was gone,
and Tweel was in a twist of black ropey arms, just as when I first saw
him. He'd missed a vital point in the beast's anatomy, but was jabbing
away desperately with his beak.

"Somehow, the spell had lifted, or partially lifted. I wasn't five feet
from Tweel, and it took a terrific struggle, but I managed to raise my
revolver and put a Boland shell into the beast. Out came a spurt of
horrible black corruption, drenching Tweel and me--and I guess the
sickening smell of it helped to destroy the illusion of that valley of
beauty. Anyway, we managed to get Leroy away from the devil that had
him, and the three of us staggered to the ridge and over. I had presence
of mind enough to raise my camera over the crest and take a shot of the
valley, but I'll bet it shows nothing but gray waste and writhing
horrors. What we saw was with our minds, not our eyes."

Jarvis paused and shuddered. "The brute half poisoned Leroy," he
continued. "We dragged ourselves back to the auxiliary, called you, and
did what we could to treat ourselves. Leroy took a long dose of the
cognac that we had with us; we didn't dare try anything of Tweel's
because his metabolism is so different from ours that what cured him
might kill us. But the cognac seemed to work, and so, after I'd done one
other thing I wanted to do, we came back here--and that's all."

"All, is it?" queried Harrison. "So you've solved all the mysteries of
Mars, eh?"

"Not by a damned sight!" retorted Jarvis. "Plenty of unanswered
questions are left."

"_Ja!_" snapped Putz. "Der evaporation--dot iss shtopped how?"

"In the canals? I wondered about that, too; in those thousands of miles,
and against this low air-pressure, you'd think they'd lose a lot. But
the answer's simple; they float a skin of oil on the water."

Putz nodded, but Harrison cut in. "Here's a puzzler. With only coal and
oil--just combustion or electric power--where'd they get the energy to
build a planet-wide canal system, thousands and thousands of miles of
'em? Think of the job we had cutting the Panama Canal to sea level, and
then answer that!"

"Easy!" grinned Jarvis. "Martian gravity and Martian air--that's the
answer. Fig