Suddenly Ted heard a weak sound outside, above the roar of the wind. “Yank!” he cried. “We forgot all about Yank! We’ve got to let him in!”
They ran to the front-door air lock. There they found the color bear clawing at the outer door. The dust covered him so thickly that he nearly blended completely with the yellowish background.
Ted flipped a switch opening the outer door. Yank scrambled quickly inside. Then, when the air pressure in the little outer compartment was equal to that in the house, Ted opened the inner door. Yank tumbled in in a flurry of scattering sand.
Ted thought the Martian animal was the most forlorn sight he had ever seen. His fur was dirty and matted, his eyes were bloodshot, and every step he took brought a cascade of sand down around his feet.
“He looks like he needs another shower,” Randy said.
“There’s nothing else we can do now,” Ted agreed. Besides, he figured the activity would take his mind off their troubles.
Mrs. Kenton was still with Jill. The boys marched Yank down the hallway to the bathroom. When Yank saw what was in store for him, he eagerly jumped into the shower basin. Ted turned on the water, and streams of dark-red liquid poured down Yank into the drain.
“He must have half the sand of Mars on him,” Ted commented.
Suddenly his mother came up to the door and looked in. “Jill’s getting worse!” she said. “Ted, you and Randy must go out after the doctor.”
Ted was not keen to venture out into the dust storm, but thoughts of his sister lying desperately ill quickly drove all hesitation from his mind. He and Randy climbed into their space suits, and as they approached the front-door air lock, Ted was relieved to find that he could begin to see through the thinning dust.
“It’ll be over in a few minutes now,” Randy said.
But if Ted expected any easy time of it outdoors, he was mistaken. The storm still had a lot of fight left in it. The wind struck them relentlessly, turning them around and blinding their gaze with whirling dust. They could not even thrust through it to the boat. Ted signaled to Randy that they would have to stand close to the house until the storm had subsided even more.
At last the wind died to gusts. The air was clearer now, and the stars were once again visible overhead.