that seemed to continue to infinity. A painful, slipping climb to the top of each one, then and equally difficult descent to the black-pooled hollow at the foot of the next.
With the first lightening of the sky in the east he stopped, breath rasping in his chest, to mark his direction before the stars faded. One line scratched in the sand pointed due north, a second pointed out the course they should follow. When they were aligned to his satisfaction he washed his mouth out with a single swallow of water and sat on the sand next to the still form of the girl.
Gold fingers of fire searched across the sky, wiping out the stars. It was magnificent, Brion forgot his fatigue in appreciation. There should be some way of preserving it. A quatrain would be best. Short enough to be remembered, yet requiring attention and skill to compact everything into it. He had scored high with his quatrains in the Twenties. This would be a special one. Taind, his poetry mentor would have to get a copy.
'What are you mumbling about?' Lea asked, looking up at the craggy blackness of his profile against the reddening sky.
'Poem,' he said. '
It was too much for Lea, coming after the tension and dangers of the night. She began to laugh, laughing even harder when he scowled at her angrily. Only when she heard the tinge of growing hysteria did she make an attempt to break off the laughter. The sun cleared the horizon, washing a sudden warmth over them. Lea gasped.
'Your throat's been cut! You're bleeding to death!'
'Not really,' he said, touching his fingertips lightly against the blood-clotted wound that circled his neck. 'Just superficial.'
Depression sat on him as he suddenly remembered the battle and death of the previous night. Lea didn't notice his face. She was busy digging in the pack he had thrown down. He had to use his fingers to massage and force away the grimace of pain that twisted his mouth. Memory was more painful than the wound. How easily he had killed. Three men. How close to the surface of the civilized man the animal dwelled. In the countless matches he had used those holds, always drawing back from the exertion of the full killing power. They were part of a game, part of the Twenties. Yet when his friend had been killed he had become a killer himself. He believed in nonviolence and the sanctity of life. Until the first test when he had killed without hesitation. More ironic was the fact he really felt no guilt. Shock at the change, yes. But no more than that.
'Lift your chin,' Lea said, brandishing the antiseptic applier she had found in the medicine kit. He lifted obligingly and the liquid drew a cool, burning line across his neck. Antibio pills would do a lot more good, since the wound was completely clotted by now, but he didn't speak his thoughts aloud. For the moment Lea had forgotten herself in taking care of him. He put some of the antiseptic on her scalp bruise and she squeaked, pulling back. They both swallowed the pills.
'That sun is hot already,' Lea grumbled, peeling off her heavy clothing. 'Let's find a nice cool cave to crawl into for the day.'
'I don't think there are any here, just sand. We have to walk—'
'I know we have to walk,' she interrupted angrily. 'There's no need for a lecture about it. You're as seriously cubical as the Bank of Terra. Relax. Take ten and start again.' Lea was making empty talk while she listened to the memory of hysteria tittering at the fringes of her brain.
'No time for that. We have to keep going.' Brion climbed slowly to his feet after stowing everything in the pack. When he sighted along his marker at the western horizon he saw nothing to mark their course, only the marching dunes. He helped Lea to her feet and began walking slowly towards them.
'Just hold on a second,' Lea called after him. 'Where do you think you're going?'
'In that direction,' he said pointing. 'I hoped there would be some landmarks. There aren't. We'll have to keep on by dead reckoning. The sun will keep us pretty well on course. If we aren't there by night, the stars will be a better guide.'
'All this on an empty stomach? How about breakfast? I'm hungry—and thirsty.'
'No food.' He shook the canteen that gurgled emptily. It has been only partly filled when he found it. 'The water's low and we'll need it later.'
'I need it now,' she snapped. 'My mouth tastes like an unemptied ashtray and I'm dry as paper.'
'Just a single swallow,' he said. 'This is all we have.'
Lea sipped at it with her eyes closed in appreciation. He sealed the top and returned it to the pack without taking any himself. They were sweating as they started up the first dune.
The desert was barren of life; they were the only things moving under that merciless sun. Their shadows pointed the way ahead of them, and as the shadows shortened the heat rose. It had an intensity Lea had never experienced before, a physical weight that pushed at her with a searing hand. Her clothing was sodden with perspiration, and it trickled burning into her eyes. The light and heat made it hard to see and she leaned on the immovable strength of Brion's arm. He walked on steadily, apparently ignoring the heat and discomfort.
'I wonder if those things are edible—or store water?' Brion's voice was a harsh rasp. Lea blinked and squinted at the leathery shape on the summit of the dune. Plant or animal, it was hard to tell. The size of a man's head, wrinkled and gray as dried-out leather, knobbed with thick spikes. Brion pushed it up with his toe and they had a brief glimpse of a white roundness, like a shiny taproot, going down into the dune. Then the thing contracted, pulling itself lower into the sand. At the same instant something thin and sharp lashed out through a fold in the skin, striking at Brion's boot and withdrawing. There was a scratch on the hard plastic, beaded with drops of green liquid.
'Probably poison,' he said, digging his toe into the sand. 'This thing is too mean to fool with—without a good reason. Let's keep going.'
It was before noon when Lea fell down. She really wanted to go on, but her body wouldn't obey. The thin soles of her shoes were no protection against the burning sand and her feet were lumps of raw pain. Heat hammered down, poured up from the sand and swirled her in an oven of pain. The air she gasped in was molten metal that dried and cracked her mouth. Each pulse of her heart throbbed blood to the wound in her scalp until it seemed her skull would burst with the agony. She had stripped down to the short tunic—in spite of Brion's insistence that she keep her body protected from the sun—and that clung to her, soaked with sweat. She tore at it in a desperate effort to breathe. There was no escape from the unending heat.
Though the baked sand burned torture into her knees and hands she couldn't rise. It took all her strength not to fall farther. Her eyes closed and everything swirled in immense circles.
Brion blinking through slitted eyes, saw her go down. He lifted and carried her again as he had the night before. The hot touch of her body shocked his bare arms. Her skin was flushed pink. Wiping his palm free of sweat and sand he touched her skin and felt the ominous hot dryness.
Heat-shock, all the symptoms. Dry, flushed skin, the ragged breathing. Her temperature rising quickly as her body stopped fighting the heat and succumbed.
There was nothing he could do here to protect her from the heat. He measured a tiny portion of the remaining water into her mouth and she swallowed convulsively. The thinnest of the clothing protected her slight body from the direct rays of the sun. After that he could only take her in his arms and keep on toward the horizon. An outcropping of rock there threw a tiny patch of shade and he walked toward it.
The ground here, shielded from the direct rays of the sun, felt almost cool by contrast. Lea opened her eyes when he put her down, peering up at him through a haze of pain. She wanted to apologize to him for her weakness, but no words came from the dried membrane of her throat. His body above her seemed to swim back and forth in the heat waves, swaying like a tree in a high wind.
Shock drove her eyes open, cleared her mind for the instant. He really was swaying. With sudden horror she realized how much she had come to depend on the eternal solidity of his strength. Now it was failing. All over his body the corded muscles contracted in ridges, striving to keep him erect. She saw his mouth pulled open by the taut cords of his neck and the gaping, silent scream was more terrible than any sound. Then she screamed herself as his eyes rolled back, leaving just the empty white of the eyeballs staring terribly at her. He went over, back down, like a felled tree, thudding heavily on the sand. Unconscious or dead she couldn't tell. She pulled limply at his leg, but
