The Great Hydration

During daylight he continually scanned the sky hoping to see a lighter from the Enterprise come curving down towards him. In that, he had been disappointed. But not really surprised. It wasn’t the done thing to leave a bondman in distress—not if you wanted to ensure the loyalty of your staff—but with the partners down on the ground that bastard O’Rourke was in charge, and in his eyes Northrop was a traitor anyway.

His entreaties to Karvass had been unavailing. The Artaxa had looked stonily ahead without answering whenever Northrop tried to explain that he must be taken back to the camp immediately, because of his daily need for water.

Northrop had begun to accept that he was doomed.

He had to admit that the sandboat was a marvellous construction, well adapted to the terrain over which it travelled. Its radium motor humming, it fairly skimmed over the soft yellow sand day and night. In a mostly featureless environment he could not easily estimate its speed, but if he had been told they were covering somewhere between one and two thousand kilometers per planetary rotation—about thirty hours—he would not have been in the least surprised.

It was yet one more similarity between Tenacity and the fictional Barsoom, he told himself: technical sophistication in a sparsely populated warrior culture (which in the case of the green Barsoomians had been nomadic to boot). In Burroughs’ stories that had been a contradiction. It was like expecting Genghis Khan’s Mongols to manufacture machine guns.

Yet here, it was a reality.

Then, when the sandboat wound among the hill formation and plunged down the underground bank to emerge into the huge cavern, he almost forgot his plight. Here indeed was a wonder not described in any of the Burroughs’ Martian books he had read. True, the Tlixix were said to live in domes which might be of comparable size, but they were not like the Barsoomians either. They were more like the hippopotamus-resembling masters of Pellucidar, the world within the Earth. And he doubted if the Tlixix boasted such numbers as he saw jostling on the floor of the great cavern.

Entranced, he gazed up at the mass of glowing crystal of which the roof was composed, turning the whole huge space into an eerie grotto.

Karvass nudged him from the sandboat and towards a line of Artaxa whose skin seemed rougher than his own. Perhaps, Northrop thought, that meant they were older. Their metal ornaments were more numerous, too. His mind went back again to Barsoom, where metal ornaments on otherwise naked bodies were like campaign medals or badges of rank, collected by killing someone.

A younger Artaxa came from somewhere to the side of the welcoming committee. He carried a small bucket-like container with a metal lid, which he offered to Northrop.

Holding it in one arm, Roncie removed the lid. The container held what looked like water, though it was dark and oily-looking.

He was puzzled. The Tlixix were supposed to have all the water on the surface of the planet. He dipped a finger in the liquid and tasted it. It was not salty, at any rate. It tasted like brackish water.

His thirst became overpowering. He lifted the container to his lips and drank, cautiously at first. The water had a strong mineral taste, but it was drinkable.

Gasping with relief, he put the lid back on. Holding on to the container, he turned to Karvass.

“Where did this come from?”

Karvass pointed a lank finger to a group of creatures who were neither Artaxa nor even humanoid. They were vaguely lizard-like, standing erect with a forward-sloping posture, but white as worms which never saw the light.

“Those are our allies the Sawune, who live in deep caverns, much deeper than this. There, they have found water.”

So! There was water which the Tlixix had not sequestered, though probably not much. Northrop tried to recall his brief look at the report on the species of Tenacity. Apart from the numerous dehydrate humanoids, there were also dehydrate lizard species, mostly subterranean. It was possible that a few pools of fresh water had survived evaporation in far-down pockets, also escaping detection by the lobsters’ enthusiastic water-searches.

A more far-reaching realization came to him, now that the long drink had cleared his mind. His captors had known in advance that he needed water. They had made provision for it.

He turned again to Karvass.

“Thank you. But what about food?”

The Artaxa’s facial membranes adopted a configuration. Northrop knew enough by now to interpret this as an expression display, but he didn’t know of what. Karvass’s verbal response, however, made it clear it was one of surprise.

“But have you not eaten? Surely you do not need to eat again?”