HOME IS WHERE YOU LEFT IT
By ADAM CHASE
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories February1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The chance of mass slaughter was their eternal nightmare.
Only the shells of deserted mud-brick houses greeted Steve Cantwell whenhe reached the village.
He poked around in them for a while. The desert heat was searing,parching, and the Sirian sun gleamed balefully off the blades of Steve'sunicopter, which had brought him from Oasis City, almost five hundredmiles away. He had remembered heat from his childhood here on Sirius'second planet with the Earth colony, but not heat like this. It was likea magnet drawing all the moisture out of his body.
He walked among the buildings, surprise and perhaps sadness etched onhis gaunt, weather-beaten face. Childhood memories flooded back: thesingle well from which all the families drew their water, the mud-brickhouse, hardly different from the others and just four walls and a roofnow, in which he'd lived with his aunt after his parents had been killedin a Kumaji raid, the community center where he'd spent his happiesttime as a boy.
He went to the well and hoisted up a pailful of water. The winch creakedas he remembered. He ladled out the water, suddenly very thirsty, andbrought the ladle to his lips.
He hurled the ladle away. The water was bitter. Not brackish.
Poisoned.
He spat with fury, then kneeled and stuffed his mouth with sand, almostgagging. After a while he spat out the sand too and opened his canteenand rinsed his mouth. His lips and mouth were paralyzed by contact withthe poison. He walked quickly across the well-square to his aunt'shouse. Inside, it was dim but hardly cooler. Steve was sweating, thesaline sweat making him blink. He scowled, not understanding. The tablewas set in his aunt's house. A coffeepot was on the stove and lastnight's partially-consumed dinner still on the table.
The well had been poisoned, the town had been deserted on the spur ofthe moment, and Steve had returned to his boyhood home from Earth—toolate for anything.
He went outside into the square. A lizard was sunning itself and staringat him with lidless eyes. When he moved across the square, the lizardscurried away.
"Earthman!" a quavering voice called.
Steve ran toward the sound. In the scant shadow of the community center,a Kumaji was resting. He was a withered old man, all skin and bones andsweat-stiffened tunic, with enormous red-rimmed eyes. His purple skin,which had been blasted by the merciless sun, was almost black.
Steve held the canteen to his lips and watched his throat working almostspasmodically to get the water down. After a while Steve withdrew thecanteen and said:
"What happened here?"
"They're gone. All gone."
"Yes, but what happened?"
"The Kumaji—"
"You're Kumaji."
"This is my town," the old man said. "I lived with the Earthmen. Nowthey're gone."
"But you stayed here—"
"To die," the old man said, without self-pity. "I'm too old to flee, tooold to fight, too old for anything but death. More water."
Steve gave him another drink. "You still haven't told me what happened."Actually, though, Steve could guess. With the twenty-second cen