Breska grinned. "I just wasn't as dumb as you. I hung behind till they were all outside, and then I barred the door. I'd seen you weren't dead, and—well, this cough's got me anyway, and I hate forced marches. They give me blisters."
They grinned at each other. Tex said,
"We're a couple of damn fools, but I reckon we're stuck with it. Okay. Let's see how long we can fool 'em." He got up, gingerly. "The Skipper had some books in his quarters. Maybe one of 'em would tell what this dry stuff is."
Breska coughed and nodded. "I'll keep watch."
Tex's throat burned, but he was afraid to drink. If the water evaporated in his mouth as it had in Kuna's....
He had to try. Not knowing was worse than knowing. A second later he stood with an empty cup in his hand, fighting down panic.
Half the water had vanished before he got the cup to his mouth. The rest never touched his tongue. Yet there was nothing to see, nothing to feel. Nothing but dryness.
He turned and ran for Captain Smith's quarters.
Hertford's Jungles of Jupiter, the most comprehensive work on a subject still almost unknown, lay between Kelland's Field Tactics and Alice in Wonderland. Tex took it down, leafing through it as he climbed to the parapet.
"Here it is," he said suddenly. "'Dry Spots. These are fairly common phenomena in certain parts of the swamplands. Seemingly Nature's method for preserving the free oxygen balance in the atmosphere, colonies of ultra-microscopic animalcules spring up, spreading apparently from spores carried by animals which blunder into the dry areas.