RETURN of a LEGEND
By RAYMOND Z. GALLUN
Mars' fever they called it. Could the wild
boy cheat the Red Planet's skeleton deserts
and the dogged trailers from Port Laribee?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories March 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Port Laribee with its score of Nisson huts, sealed against the lifeless atmosphere, the red dust and the cold, was a shabby piece of Earth dropped onto Mars.
There, Dave Kort was the first wilderness tramp to be remembered. In warm seasons he'd plod into Port Laribee, burdened by a pack that only the two-fifths-of-terrestrial gravity put within the range of human muscles. He was a great, craggy old man, incredibly grimed and browned, his frostbites bandaged with dry Martian leaves tied on with their own fibre.
His snag-toothed grin was bemused and secret through the scratched plastic of his air-hood. He'd trade carven stones, bits of ancient metal, or oddities of plant and animal life for chewing tobacco, chocolate, heavily lined clothes, mending supplies, and new parts for his battered portable air-compressor.
He'd refuse a bath with disdain. And at last his rusty, monosyllabic speech would wax eloquent—comparatively.
"So long, fellas," he'd say. "See yuh around."