The damned spacesuits bothered us. I fumbled with hers and then with my own, and finally we shed them.
A long time later, we remembered we still had a job to do and we went on our way again. We reached Chalus, as deep as the Lacus canal, but containing more water—it was half as wide as the Hudson.
As we paused on the rim, looking toward the deep channel, Gail seized my arm and pointed. I'd seen it, too, about the same time—a long, flat barge, heaped with what looked like hay. It wasn't hay, of course, but Martian vegetation, cut and stacked on the barge. It was being taken by canal in the direction of Pnyx. And Martians, pulling ropes tied to the barge, were the motive power. There were slaves on Mars.
"Martian commerce," I said.
We rolled on, paralleling the canal until suddenly, ahead of us, lay another deep cut, branching out from Chalus and running almost directly west.
We had no idea how long it was, for there was no sign of it on maps. And when we decided to try to cross it in our machine we saw the reason why. The canal was empty. It was half-filled with sand from countless dust storms, and there was not a blade of Martian grass in the bottom.
It was an abandoned canal.
And on the other side was an ancient road.
It was paved with some kind of material that resembled concrete, although it was cracked and looked as if it had not been used for years.
"Do you suppose the Martians had cars?" Gail asked as we stopped on the road.