Hours later Bormon was indeed wandering, hopeless as a lost soul, over nighted Echo, awaiting the consummation of his sentence, which now seemed very near. Already his oxygen gauge indicated zero and he was face to face with the "dying slowly" process promised by the Martians—the terrible death of suffocation.
Now, as things began to seem vague and unreal around him, Bormon was drawing near that hidden cave where he and Calbur had often met for like a final flash of inspiration had come the thought that here, if anywhere, he would find Calbur.
It was strange, he reflected, how the life in a man forces him on and on, always hoping, to the very end. For now it seemed that the most important thing in the universe was to find Calbur.
He had husbanded the last of his oxygen to the utmost. But panting, now, for breath, he opened the valve a fraction of a turn and staggered on in the darkness. And suddenly, dimly as in a dream, he knew that at last he had found Calbur....
And Calbur was doing a queer thing. Gauntleted hands moving hastily in the chalky radiance cast by his helmet-light, he was tossing chunks of rhodium from his filled ore-basket—
Then their helmets clicked together, and he heard Calbur's voice, faint, urgent:
"Climb in the basket! I'll cover you with ore so they won't see you. I'll drag you in. Well get your tank filled—I swear it!"
The next instant, it seemed, Bormon felt himself being tumbled into the ore-basket. Chunks of ore began pressing down lightly on his body. Then the basket commenced to pitch and scrape over the rocks.
But his lungs were bursting! Could he last? He had to. He couldn't fool Calbur by passing out—not now. Something like destiny was working, and he'd have to see it through.