be nice. And remember, MacIan, he thinks you sold him out. He thinks you cost him his post, his men, his career: his honor, you scut! Think that over when the swamp-rats go to work on you—they like a little fun now and then—and remember I’m laughing!”
*
MacIan was silent for a long time, hands clenched at his sides, his craggy face carved in dark stone under his dripping white hair. Then he whispered, “Why?”
Thekla’s eyes met his in sudden intense hate. “Because I want to see your damned proud, supercilious noses rubbed in the dirt!”
MacIan nodded. His face was strange, as though a curtain had been drawn over it. “Where’s Lehn?”
Thekla pointed to the nearest hut. “But it won’t do you any good. The rats gave him an overdose, accidentally, of course, and he’s out for a long time.”
MacIan went unsteadily toward the hut through rain. Over his shoulder he heard Thekla’s voice: “Don’t try anything funny, MacIan. I can shoot you down before you’re anywhere near an escape, even if you could find your way back without me. The Nahali are gathering now, all over the swamp; within half an hour they’ll march on the fort, and then on to the plateaus. They’ll send my escort before they go, but you and Lehn will have to wait until they come back. You can think of me while you’re waiting to die, MacIan; me, going to Lhiva and freedom!”
MacIan didn’t answer. The rhythm of the rain changed from a slow drumming to a rapid, vicious hiss; he could see it, almost smoking in the broad leaves of the liha -trees. The drops cut his body like whips, and he realized for the first time that he was stripped to trousers and shirt. Without his protective rubber coverall, Thekla could electrocute him far quicker even than a Nahali, with his service pistol.
The hut, which had been very close, was suddenly far off, so far he could hardly see it. The muddy ground swooped and swayed underfoot. MacIan jerked himself savagely erect. Fever. Any fool who prowled the swamp without proper covering was a sure victim. He looked back at Thekla, safe in helmet and coverall, grinning like a weasel under the shelter of a pod-hung tree-branch.
The hut came back into proper perspective. Aching, trembling suddenly with icy cold, he stooped and entered. Lehn lay there, dry but stripped like MacIan, his young face slack in unconsciousness. MacIan raised a hand, let it fall limply back. Lehn was still paralyzed from the shock. It might be hours, even days before he came out of it. Perhaps never, if he wasn’t cared for properly.
MacIan must have gone a little mad then, from the fever and the shock to his own brain, and Thekla. He took Lehn’s shirt in both hands and shook him, as though to beat sense back into his brain, and shouted at him in hoarse savagery.
“All I wanted was to die! That’s what I came to the Legion for, to die like a soldier because I couldn’t live like an officer. But it had to be honorably, Lehn! Otherwise....”
He broke off in a fit of shivering, and his blue eyes glared under his white, tumbled hair. “You robbed me of that, damn you! You and Thekla. You trapped me. You wouldn’t even let me die decently. I was an officer, Lehn, like you. Do you hear me, young fool? I had to choose between two courses, and I chose the wrong one. I lost my whole command. Twenty-five hundred men, dead.
“They might have let me off at the court-martial. It was an honest mistake. But I didn’t wait. I resigned. All I wanted was to die like a good soldier. That’s why I volunteered. And you tricked me, Lehn! You and Thekla.”
He let the limp body fall and crouched there, holding his throbbing head in his hands. He knew he was crying, and couldn’t stop. His skin burned, and he was cold to the marrow of his bones.
Suddenly he looked at Lehn out of bright, fever-mad eyes. “Very well,” he whispered. “I won’t die. You can’t kill me, you and Thekla, and you go on believing I betrayed you. I’ll take you back, you two, and fight it out. I’ll keep the Nahali from taking the fort, so you can’t say I sold it out. I’ll make you believe me!”
From somewhere, far off, he heard Thekla laugh.
*
MacIan huddled there for some time, his brain whirling. Through the rain-beat and the fever-mist in his head and the alternate burning and freezing that racked his body, certain truths shot at him like stones from a sling.
Thekla had a gun that shot a stream of electricity. A gun designed for Nahali, whose nervous systems were built to carry a certain load and no more, like any set of wires. The low frequency discharge was strong enough to kill a normal man only under ideal conditions; and these conditions were uniquely ideal. Wet clothes, wet skin, wet ground, even the air saturated.
Then there were metal and rubber. Metal in his belt, in Lehn’s belt; metal mesh, because the damp air rotted everything else. Rubber on his feet, on Lehn’s feet. Rubber was insulation. Metal was a conductor.
MacIan realized with part of his mind that he must be mad to do what he planned to do. But he went to work just the same.
Ten minutes later he left the hut and crossed the soaking clearing in the downpour. Thekla had left the liha -tree for a hut directly opposite Lehn’s; he rose warily in the doorway, gun ready. His sly black eyes took in MacIan’s wild blue gaze, the fever spots burning on his lean cheekbones, and he smiled.
“Get on back to the hut,” he said. “Be a pity if you die before the Nahali have a chance to try electro-therapy.”
MacIan didn’t pause. His right arm was hidden behind his back. Thekla’s jaw tightened. “Get back or I’ll kill you!”
MacIan’s boots sucked in the mud. The beating rain streamed from his white hair, over his craggy face and gaunt shoulders. And he didn’t hesitate.
Thekla’s pointed teeth gleamed in a sudden snarl. His thumb snapped the trigger; a bolt of blue flame hissed toward the striding Scot.
MacIan’s right hand shot out in the instant the gun spoke. One of Lehn’s rubber boots cased his arm almost to the shoulder, and around the ankle of it a length of metal was made fast; two mesh belts linked together. The spitting blue fire was gathered to the metal circle, shot down the coupled lengths, and died in the ground.
The pistol sputtered out as a coil fused. Thekla cursed and flung it at MacIan’s head. The Scot dodged it, and broke into a run, dropping Lehn’s boot that his hands might be free to grapple.
Thekla fought like a low-canal rat, but MacIan was bigger and beyond himself with the first madness of fever. He beat the little Martian down and bound him with his own belt, and then went looking for his clothes and gun.
He found them, with Lehn’s, in the hut next door. His belt pouch yielded quinine; he gulped a large dose and felt better. After he had dressed, he went and wrestled Lehn into his coverall and helmet and dragged him out beside Thekla, who was groaning back to consciousness in the mud.
Looking up, MacIan saw three Nahali men watching him warily out of scarlet eyes as they slunk toward him.
Thekla’s escort. And it was a near thing. Twice clammy paws seared his face before he sent them writhing down into the mud, jerking as the overload beat through their nervous systems. Triangular mouths gaped in noseless faces, hand-like paws tore convulsively at scaly breast-plates, and MacIan, as he watched them die, said calmly:
“There will be hundreds of them storming
