Her passivity was abruptly shattered when they tried to get ready for the trip. She clawed and bit like a mad animal as they struggled to slip the plasti-shield over her shoulders.
"Let me die as Brian died!" she wailed. "I do not want to live without him. You cannot make me live."
"Hey, captain," a panting patrolman shouted, "what do we do with her?"
"Put that plasti-shield on her. Tie it if you have to. She's not to go through that vac-lock without it."
The frenzy that had seized Selo seemed to subside as quickly as it began. She permitted them to make the plasti-shield secure. Her face, through the greenish-gray mask, had the texture and shading of a corpse. Zombie-like, she had lost all individuality.
"Check your thermiteens," Morrissey snapped to the patrol, "and let's get out of this place."
The men quickly filled their light-weight thermiteens with water from the supply in the humidi-hut, fastened their own plasti-shields securely over head and shoulders, put on their asbesti-mittens and stepped into the vac-lock.
Sixty seconds later, the party stood in the weird, dust-filled world outside. A hot wind pressed its dusty fingers against their protective hoods and tugged with an eerie persuasiveness at their padded jackets. Through the murk an orange sun burned in the sand-strewn sky. Rocks pitted and pocked from centuries of relentless persecution stood stark sentinel on every side. This was Venus.
Walking slightly behind Selo, shoulders hunched, head down, Morrissey worried the enigma of this strange Venusian woman and the two men who had known her. Two men—now both dead—wind-dried mummies fallen in the wastes of the Desert Rouge.
Victims of the desert, Morrissey wondered, or victims of a woman with deep-set violet eyes and blue-black hair.