_Light gravity!_ reflected Charlie. _This can only mean--MARS! Sure! That must be it--I was piloting a rocket and cracked up somewhere on Mars._ It felt right to him. He decided that the rest of his memory would return. "Are you able to rise?" asked the other, extending a helpful tentacle. The Earthman managed to haul himself stiffly to his feet. "Say, my name is Holmes," he introduced himself dizzily. "I am Kho Theki. In your language, learned years since from other spacemen, I might say 'Fiery Canalman.'" "_Has_ to be Mars," muttered Charlie under his breath. "What a bump! When can you show me what's left of the ship?" "There will be no time," answered the Martian. Bunches of small muscles twitched here and there across the front of his round, pudgy head. Charlie was getting used to the single eye, half the size of an orange and not much duller. With imagination, the various lumps and organs surrounding it might be considered a face. "The priestesses will lead the crowd here," predicted Kho. "They know I took an Earthman, and I fear they have finished with the others." "Finished with--_What_?" demanded the Earthman, shaking his head in hopes of clearing it enough to figure out what was wrong. "It has been an extremely dry season." Kho rippled his tentacles and moved lissomely to the doorway, assuming a grotesquely furtive posture as he peered out. "The people are maddened by the drought. The will be aroused to sacrifice you to the Canal Gods, like the others who survived." "Canal gods!" croaked Charlie. "This can't be right! Aren't you civilized here? I can't be the only Earthman they've seen!" "It is true that Earthmen are perfectly safe at most times." "But the laws! The earth consul--" Kho snapped the tip of a tentacle at him. "The canals are low. You can feel the heat and dryness for yourself. The crowds are inflamed by temple prophecies. And then, your ship, flaming down from the skies--" He snapped all this tentacle tips at once. * * * * * From somewhere outside, a threatening murmur became audible. It was an unholy blend of rasping shouts and shriller chanting, punctuated by notes of a brassy gong. As Charlie listened, the volume rose noticeably. Kho reached out with one tentacle and wrapped six inches about the Earthman's wrist. When he plunged through the doorway, Charlie perforce went right with him. Whipping around a corner of the hut, he had time for a quick squint at the chanters. Kho alone had looked weirdly alien. Two hundred like him--! Led by a dozen bulgy figures in streaming robes, masked and decorated in brass, the natives were swarming over the sand toward the fugitives. They had evidently been busy. Above a distant cluster of low buildings, a column of smoke spiraled upward suggestively. Kho led the way at a flowing gallop over a sandstone ridge and down a long slope toward what looked like the junction of two gullies.