[86]
Illustrated by Kelly Freas
The Hitch Hikers
The Rell, a great and ancient Martian race, faced extinctionwhen all moisture was swept from their planet.
Then, one day, a lone visitor—a strange, two-legged creaturecomposed mostly of water—landed on Mars …
The dehydration of theplanet had taken centuries inall. The Rell had still been a greatrace when the process started. Constructionof the canals was a prodigiousfeat but not a truly remarkableone. But what use are evencanals when there is nothing to fillthem?
What cosmic influences mighthave caused the disaster baffledeven the group-mind of the Rell.Through the eons the atmospherehad drifted into space; and with itwent the life-giving moisture. Originallya liquid paradise, the planetwas now a dry, hostile husk.
The large groups of Rell hadbeen the first to suffer. But in timeeven the tiny villages containingmere quadrillions of the submicroscopicentities had found too littlemoisture left to satisfy their thirstand the journey ever southward towardthe pole had commenced.
The new life was bitter and difficultand as their resources weredepleted so also did their numbersdiminish.
Huddled at their last retreat theRell watched the ever smaller icecap annually diminish and livedwith the knowledge they faced extinction.A mere thousand years[88] more would see even this triflingremainder gone.
Oh, you might say there washope … of a sort. There might beRell in the northern hemisphere.The canals girdled the globe anda similar ice cap could well existat the opposite pole. Rell perhapssurvived there also.
But this was scant comfort. Thefate of the Rell in the South wassealed. What hope of any brighterfuture for those in the North? Andif they survived a few hundredthousand years longer … or ifthey had perished a similar periodearlier, what actual difference didit make?
There was no one more awareof this gloomy future than Raeillo/ee13.
In the old days a single unit ofthe group-mind of the Rell wouldhave possessed but a single functionand exercised this functionperhaps a dozen times during hislife. But due to the inexorableshrinkage only the most importantproblems now could commandmind-action and each unit hadbeen forced to forsake specializationfor multi-purpose endeavors.
Thus Raeillo/ee13 and his mateRaellu//2 were two of the fivethousan