Free Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy by Al Sarrantonio Page A

a very good chance of
living through it!” he answered, trying to stay cheerful.
    “Living through the ride north, of
course?”
    Seeing my continued incomprehension, he
added, pointing ahead of us, “The ride north, where no one will
follow us! Across the Great Desert!” His laugh sounded almost mad.
“Don’t you remember, your majesty? When we got just a kiss of the
dust storm from the north? I told you how harsh and forbidding it
is – and now we’re heading straight into it!”
    Again his half-mad laugh. “Actually, there’s
very little chance we’ll survive!”
     

Thirteen
    T hat mad little
laugh of Copernicus’s stayed in my mind as we headed down into the
forbidding bowl that was the Great Desert. From the sparsely
grassed heights of the last plateau it didn’t look too forbidding –
the sun was shining and there was only a hint of increased heat
picked up from the hot sands below. Under the pink late summer sky
it looked merely daunting, a huge version, to three horizons,
north, east and west, of a child’s sand box. There were gentling
rolling dunes and dark patches that promised oases and, under this
summer sun on this gentle day, it looked no more horrid than a ride
across a huge valley. Substitute sand for countryside, I told
myself, and you would have this quick trip. There in the distance
were a few dark patches above the sand that seemed to undulate.
    “What are those?” I said, pointing them out
to Copernicus, who was engaged in tightly tying down everything on
our two mounts, double and triple covering everything he could,
especially his precious telescope, which had disappeared under a
bulge of blanket layers.
    “Tornadoes,” he said simply, returning to his
work, which I helped with in my clumsy way.
    Then he sat down beside his horse, crossed
his legs, and closed his eyes.
    “Now what?” I asked.
    “We wait.”
    “For what?”
    “For nightfall, of course. Only a madman
would head into the Great Desert during the day.”
    In a moment his chin lolled forward, and he
then gently collapsed onto the ground and curled up into sleep.
    I tried to follow but could not, but sat
instead contemplating the subtle play of sinking sunlight on the
sands, and the changing colors of the landscape, from severe even
pink to shades of russet and dark brown, as dusk approached and
finally fell.
    Just as I was nodding off to sleep,
Copernicus rose from the ground, stretched, and cried, “Ah!” He
shook me gently awake and said, “Time to leave!”
    “But I had no sleep,” I complained, seeking
to find the ground and slumber.
    “All the worse for you, then, your majesty,”
he said, and jostled me until I stood and then mounted my
horse.
    It was cloudy, and pitch dark when our mounts
made the first sifting steps into the sands.
    A hot breeze assaulted us from the west, as
more stars overhead were eaten by mounting cloud cover.
    Copernicus sighed. “This is not good,” he
said. “Our first night, and we’re to be welcomed with a storm.”
    But it never materialized, and as we pushed
out way down into the bowl the clouds magically dispersed above us,
and Phobos and then Deimos rose and set, and dawn found us
surrounded by hot sand, and pitching a poor man’s tent which
Copernicus had packed and now unpacked, which stood chest high at
the apex and five feet wide at the floor, but could be sealed on
all sides.
    “The smaller the better,” Copernicus
explained, “since it gives the wind less area to work on.”
    I stretched, feeling hot and ill
tempered.
    “There isn’t even a breeze,” I snapped. The
sky had remained cloudless, and the sun stood out like a hot, angry
coin against the pale and otherwise empty sky.
    “Wait an hour,” the little fellow said
patiently, and crawled into the tent.
    While I stood regarding the empty landscape,
hill upon rolling hill of nothing but bright pink sand, he added,
“I suggest you stay out of the heat as much as possible, and get
some sleep this