Several weeks later, Harry Clark stood by with an amused grin on his face as Peetn tweedled excitedly to the three Martians who had come stilting out of the south the evening before. The whistling of the Martians was less than gibberish to him, but he got the idea from the various tentacle-wavings and yellow-eyed stares in his direction that Peetn was giving them the dirt about himself.
And that was exactly what Peetn was doing.
"The monster is from Gamtl, the Paradise of the old legend," he was whistling. "Many days ago the wind blew him into the water-station, sick and dying from lack of life essentials. He was clad in the strange metal suit which you still see upon him. He is a very strange and alien being. It seems inexplicable, but I believe that he understands more about them than we for whom they exist. Well, one day in the valve-house, he laid tentacles on one of the machines, and I had to pull him bodily away from it. His interest did not carry him quite so far as that in succeeding days, but about a week later I arose in the morning to find him gone!
"His return, which I didn't expect, was the queerest sight I ever saw. He came across the desert at about midday, from the direction he first came, dragging behind him a cylindrical object which I later found to be hollow and filled with a very amazing liquid. He took this container down into the cavern of the chugging machines and unscrewed a small circular section in the top. I smelled its contents; it smelled like the juice of the merrl plant when it was crushed, a very unpleasant odor, I assure you. It also had the same consistency and texture, as I discovered surreptitiously afterwards.
"Well, he poured some of it into the chugging machines, and the noises which they had been making—stopped! It was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced. He seemed to wield some un-Martian control over them!
"Then he did a thing which makes me shudder to recount! He picked up a bar of metal half as long as my tentacle and began belaboring the machines from which I had pulled him a few weeks before! Quickly I stopped him, but something, perhaps the memory of how he had quieted the chugging machines, told me that this being could be trusted, and that he knew what he was doing. I—I took an awful chance. I squirm inside when I think of what might have happened if my trust in this Gamtlian had been misplaced. I gave him back the bar and allowed him to continue!
"He stopped banging before he broke anything, and then he did a peculiar thing. He turned the outer edge of the round machines in there," Peetn indicated the valve-house, "so that the whole top moved around itself. Then the miracle happened."
"Yes, go on," twittered the other one excitedly. "What did he do?"
Peetn paused for a moment to gather weight, and then proceeded solemnly. "He opened the little machine from which I draw my drinking water, and a stream shot forth as thick as my tentacle and spattered all about the room!" He allowed himself to exaggerate. "An unbelievable quantity of water poured out in the short space of time that I watched it."
The newcomers seemed slightly disappointed at the tale Peetn told, expecting to hear about gigantic super-Martian operations by the stranger from Gamtl, the Martian spirit-world.