Explore "Vengeance on Mars!" by Jerome Bixby on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the dim Water Temple, where the dead grinned down on the dead, Hale met his D-day. Should he give an ex-comrade to the torturing Lhrai or chance the massacre of Terrestrial thousands?
Hale cut the motor as he swerved off the ancient plastic roadway. His one-man beetle thumped over the shoulder and, wheels whispering, coasted down the sandy, moonlit slope. It threaded between mighty _linla_ cacti that had the size and shape of spaceships towering grey in the night. He braked it to a slanting stop and got out, a big, long-legged man who carefully kept the little car between himself and the Martian water temple that sat a short distance away where the dunes of the desert began. He thought, Strange to be afraid of getting shot by Randy.