The thought decided me. She would be safer with me, facing all of the Martians on Mars, than in Spartan's hands.
"Tell her she's on this patrol, too," I told Axel. "I'll get some grub and water aboard the Mars-car."
Chapter 15
Our chart which was very spare of detail since it was made from the maps drawn by Percival Lowell many years ago, showed Pnyx as the junction point of two large canals. One, called Agathedaemon, ran southeast from Oasis Erithraeum to another junction point, Messeis Fons. The other ran southwest from Lacus Major and ended at Pnyx, which seemed to be at the edge of a small oasis.
I set my compass due south, deciding to travel in that direction until I reached the canal from Lacus Major, which Lowell called Chalus.
Gail was happy to be making the extensive land trip over the surface of Mars. Pnyx was at least three times as far as Lacus Minor, but since the Mars-cars could easily maintain a speed of 150 miles an hour over the desert, we expected to reach it in a little over three hours, if nothing interfered.
"If there were only some way of communicating with the Martians," she said. "If we could only explain to them that the man who murdered the other two is in custody and will be punished and that the people of the earth didn't come to this planet to kill Martians!"
"It would solve everything but I'm afraid it's impossible," I said. "There was a big gulf between Martians and earthmen to start with. Now this thing has spread them farther apart."
"You mean they're poison to us and all that? We've demonstrated that we have some things in common, psychologically speaking."
"That could turn out to be the main stumbling block," I said. "Remember when you, Axel and I talked about personal selfishness and race selfishness? How a person would kill to save himself and die for an ideal that was important to the race?"