“LET’S TAKE A TAXI,” Farrell suggested as he rose shakily and brushed red sand from his clothes.
“No.”
“It’ll take an hour to walk there,” Farrell protested mildly.
“We’ll walk,” the man stated. “We’ll walk and we’ll take the most deserted streets.”
Farrell led the way through the small Martian city that bordered the spaceport and across a narrow stretch of desert to Dankor canal.
At the canal, he turned and followed it northward, walking on the huge, weather-smoothed stones that formed one wall of the large waterway.
Thousands of feet below them, muddy water gurgled roaringly as it moved southward to the Martian farmlands. In the clear atmosphere, the opposite wall of the canal ten miles away was a thin, dark line.
“What’s your name?” Farrell asked suddenly.
“Tharp.”
“Where do yo
