Lin Carter - The City Outside the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

had sucked in his breath between discolored teeth at his first good look at them, and his eyes had gone round and frightened.
    Oh, he would keep his mouth shut, would Yammak the slidar trader! For if he dared so much as to hint that it had been he who had helped the three zhaggua to elude their hunters and to escape into the Dustlands, those who hunted them would close the mouth of Yammak forever.
    Among the many things he hated about Mars, Ryker most of all hated slidars.
    The rangy, splay-footed, ungainly beasts were four footed, but there all resemblance to horses ended. They were reptilian, of course—Mars has hardly any mammals and no birds or insects, other than lice—and the crimson, snake-tailed creatures move with a shambling, splayfooted, loose-jointed stride that is peculiarly uncomfortable.
    It is not for nothing that the gaunt, big-shouldered, ill-tempered brutes are named slidars. The word means
    "lopers" in the Tongue; and lope they do, with an ambling, jolting rhythm more like that of a fat, stumbling hound dog than anything else on four feet.
    Ryker, however, gritted his teeth and clung to the saddle horn and gave the brute its head, allowing it to make all possible speed. He did not begin to breathe easily, or rein the beast in to a more comfortable trot until the last lights of Yeolarn had died behind them in the dark.
    Then, and only then, did he slow their advance and begin to consider where they might go.
    Yeolarn is the northernmost of the Earth colonies, and sits smack on the 250th Meridian in the center of the Thoana Palus. It is at least eleven hundred miles from Syrtis Port, which is the nearest colony to it, and to the north illimitable empty wastes of Dustland and dead rocky plateaux stretch to the Pole itself.
    When they rode out of the Dragon Gate, they had headed due north, Ryker knew. They were now in one of the talcum-soft desert regions called "Dustlands," an empty space on the map which the old Earth astronomers had filled in with the name Aetheria. Due east was an even broader expanse of powdery desert called Cebrenia, which stretched on for twelve hundred miles or so before the mesalike bulk of Propontis rose to block the way.
    West, however, they would only have to ride three hundred miles or less to reach the low, rocky hills of Alcyonius Nodus. There, at least, they could find shelter in the caves which the tides of ancient oceans had cut into the cliffs which had once been the coastline of an old continent. And, perhaps, they could find food as well.
    He turned to his companions to suggest this, but decided to delay the question until morning, now not long away. For the night had been long and busy. None of them
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    had enjoyed any sleep, and precious little rest, and they were all wearied from their exertions. Indeed, the old man swayed weakly in the saddle, and the girl sat her mount with head low, shoulders bent, slumped dispiritedly.
    "Let's dismount here, have something to eat, and snatch a few hours sleep," he suggested.
    The girl looked up quickly, her golden eyes filled with fear.
    "Is it safe? Perhaps we are pursued—"
    Ryker shook his head.
    "They'll have found where we entered the sewers, having broken down the cellar door by now, surely," he grunted. "But there's no way they can tell which way we went, or where we came up to the street. Those sewers run for miles and miles, and I replaced the plate that sealed the street exit. And Yammak will not talk."
    "How can you be sure of that?"
    He grinned, wolfishly, and explained. The girl nodded wearily, satisfied, and got down from her slidar.
    Wrapped in the warm cloaks supplied by Yammak's woman, they hungrily devoured cold sliced meat, dry bread and preserved jellies, washed down by a frugal swallow of red wine.
    They slept that night like the dead, huddled together for warmth.
    The air of Mars is thin, and cold, and dry. So dry that it sucks the moisture from your tissues, and so cold that it makes the air atop Everest