It was too late. The rust had beaten them. His freckled, oil-smeared face tightened grimly. Drawing his gun, he charged the steps. "Where the hell did you go?" snarled Breska. "The ammo belt jammed." He grabbed for the other gun set in the narrow gap. Then it wasn't rust! And Tex realized something else. There were no rust flakes falling from the net. Something had stopped the rusting. Before, his physical anguish had been too great for him to see that the net strands grew no thinner, the gun-barrels no rustier. Scraps of the explanation shot through Tex's mind. Breska's cough stopping because the air was dried before it reached his lungs. Dry stone. Dry clothing. Dry metal! The water-eating organisms kept the surface dry. There could be no rust. "We've licked 'em, Breska! By God, we've licked 'em!" He shouldered the Martian out of the way, gripped the triggers of the gun. Shouting over the din, he told Breska how to drink, sent him lurching down the steps. He could hold the gap alone for a few minutes. Looking up, Tex found her, swooping low over the fight, her silver hair flying in the wind. Tex shouted at her. "You did it! You outsmarted yourself, lady. You showed us the way!" Scientists could find out how to harness the Dry Spots to keep off the rust, and still let the soldiers drink. And some day the swamps would be drained, and men and women would find new wealth, new life, new horizons here on Jupiter. Breska came back, grinning, and fought the jam out of the gun. White bodies began to pile up, mixed with the saurian carcasses of their war-dogs. And presently the notes of the war-chief's horn drifted down, and the attackers faded back into the swamps. And suddenly, wheeling her mount away from the others, the warrior woman swooped low over the parapet. Tex held his fire. For a moment he thought she was going to dash her lizard into them. Then, at the last second, she pulled him up in a thundering climb. Her face was a cut-pearl mask of fury, but her pale-green eyes held doubt, the beginning of an awed fear. Then she was gone, bent low over her mount, her silver hair hiding her face. Breska watched her go. "For Mars," he said softly. Then, pounding Tex on the chest until he winced. Two voices, cracked, harsh, and unmusical, drifted after the retreating form of the white-haired war-chief. "Oh, bury us not on the lone praire-e-e...." End of Project Gutenberg's The Dragon-Queen of Jupiter, by Leigh Brackett