“Only a little rest!” he muttered thickly, but the force in his head lifted his leaden feet and sent them marching toward the rocket camp. Above him the gray clouds passed over the moon, and he looked up at Mars shining in the sky. Words from the lower part of the drummer’s vocabulary came into his throat, but the effort of saying them was more than the red planet merited. He plowed on in silence.
Mars had moved over several degrees in the sky when he first sighted the camp, lying in a long, narrow valley. At one end were the shacks of the workmen, at the other a big structure that housed the rocket from chance prying eyes. Haines stopped to cough out part of his lungs, and his breath was husky and labored as he worked his way down.
The guards should be strung out along the edge of the v
