"Duck!" Nick warned as a flare blossomed into a circle of blinding whiteness.
Three times the rocket dived and circled the growing lake, and when it left as the last flare died it returned to the field at full throttle. Nick could imagine the pilot's almost incoherent radio reports. Water on Mars! A lake in the desert!
The number of lights in Central Camp doubled while they watched. A gate in the barrier opened and three huge half-tracks roared out with searchlights glaring. They reached the pond, and even from the distance of their hiding place Susan and Nick could see the tiny figures of men as they rushed to the shore, touching the water, kneeling to dip their arms in it, even raising it to their lips.
The green star of Earth rose over the horizon, and then the thing for which Nick had been hoping actually happened.
All the lights of Central Camp went dim as power connections were changed. And then the flare of the great subatomic space beacon began to wink a message, the great beacon that depleted the power resources of the camp so badly that it was to be used only for messages of extreme urgency. But this was urgent indeed. Water on Mars! An hour, two, the coded news flamed into space.
Nick and Susan crept down the slope, bone-chilled from their windswept watch, to tell the injured Martian what had happened.
"If that doesn't bring a special ship out, then nothing will," Nick exulted.
At dawn a procession of armored cars began to flow between the camp and the lake, and just before noon several hastily improvised tank trucks appeared, loaded and returned. No patrol rockets went out, for it seemed the entire schedule of the camp had been disrupted.
Shortly after noon the lake ceased growing and began to dwindle. Slowly at first, then with increasing rapidity the water vanished into the sand. There was confusion in Central Camp and at the shores of the pool.