Sammy, of course, realized that this was what had probably happened and that we had just missed rescue. "Our usual luck," he said morosely.

 

 

"I checked that all the fuel was really gone," said Jim. "I climbed into the firing chambers. The blast had never been cut at all. It was just left till all the fuel was gone."

 

 

"Well done, Jim," I said. "I can't think of any more you could have done."

 

 

"There was something else," he said hesitantly, not wishing to appear to be boasting. "I was a long time in space both ways, and I spent most of the time looking for other ships. The sky is full of pinpricks of light, and it's difficult to pick out anything for sure. But I saw that both our ship and the other lifeship had a bluish tinge. I looked for any other spots of light with that blue tinge about them . . . there weren't any I could be really sure about."

 

 

He looked at Sammy a little nervously, perhaps expecting him to explode in bitter fulminations against somebody or Fate. He gulped, aware of his responsibility in positively denying something that none of us could check, or affirming something that might be wrong.

 

 

"There was one little speck that might be a lifeship," he said at last. "I could hardly be sure it was there. Away out toward Saturn."

 

 

"Could you get to it, Jim?" I asked.

 

 

"I might. But . . . I don't think I could get back. If this ship behind us is six miles away -- and I think it's probably quite a lot more than that -- the other ship must be at least a hundred miles away." He added, apologetically again: "I'm not really sure it's there at all."

 

 

Then contacting other lifeships was out of the question. I could use our fuel to get nearer the second ship Jim mentioned, but it was too big a risk, and not worth it.

 

 

"We may as well forget other lifeships," I said. "It was a chance, that's all. Never mind, Jim. It was worth it anyway."

 

 

 

 

The days slipped past. Sammy really had very little to complain about. I could think of a lot of unpleasant things that might have happened to us that didn't, and a lot of respects in which we were fortunate.

 

 

The course was one thing. I wasn't responsible for that. The men at Detroit who had set up the ship and trimmed the jets had done a magnificent job. Every new calculation I made showed more clearly that we were going to hit Mars fairly and squarely, without a single blast for course correction. That isn't precisely what you'd expect. The wildest optimist would hesitate about suggesting that you could set up a ship on the surface of Earth so accurately that mere blasting free into space would send it directly to Mars -- or where Mars would be when it got there.

 

 

If we did get through, if we did land safely, the real credit would go to the men who had trimmed the ship. Even if we didn't, it was already clear that they had done all they could for us. And if we didn't get through, who would? Certainly not the ships that had had to correct their course just clear of Earth's gravitational pull, again on the way, and a third time as they neared Mars.

 

 

I haven't mentioned the things that went off pretty much as expected. The air inevitably became a little stale; we couldn't wash it out thoroughly. There were grouses about that. Food from a hydroponics plant is all very well, but there was a sameness about it that made some of us want to scream. Potatoes, water, synthetic protein, vitamin tablets, tomatoes, sugar, lemon juice, carotene, and all the rest of it -- eating on the lifeship wasn't interesting or enjoyable, and we all felt permanently unsatisfied and dreamed of steaks and fried chicken. But all the same, food was never a problem. There were no signs of malnutrition. All the hydroponics plant and our meager supplies were meant to do was keep us alive and reasonably healthy, and they did that perfectly efficiently.

 

 

Some of us missed tobacco. I didn't -- I had been a smoker, but I saw so clearly before the trip started that living was more important than smoking that I hardly thought of it after that. Not smoking was part of life on the lifeship, like the weightlessness.

 

 

Exercise wasn't missed as much as we'd have thought. You don't need as much exercise when you can relax utterly, and we all learned that. We became capable of floating so limply in the air that a mere hint of a draft would roll us over, bend our limbs, wag our heads. Relaxation like that just isn't possible when gravity is present.

 

 

For the exercise that was necessary we instituted a sort of sports day that was held regularly. The purpose wasn't competition, it was primarily to use muscles that otherwise wouldn't be used at all. The sports became more complicated every time as we adapted ourselves more and more to the conditions.

 

 

There was Four-five-bump, for example. You had to start out from one wall, touching five walls with left hand, right hand, left foot, right foot, and head, and bumping on the last with what Harry Phillips called your Sunday face. The whole thing was timed, and the winner was the person who could do it most quickly. The usual winner was Bessie, presumably because she was the most adaptable among us. None of the rest of us could get the trick of doing the whole thing as a concerted action the way she did.

 

 

There was the arm race, a race across the lounge without a push-off, using only the arms to propel you through the air. Again strength didn't count. It was Miss Wallace who made the best use of arms and air resistance, pulling herself rapidly along with slow, strong strokes.

 

 

There was wrestling, in which a fall was a touch against any wall. Sammy and I would wrestle, then Leslie and Miss Wallace, Betty and Jim, and so on until we all ganged up on Bessie, to her delight.

 

 

I think generally we must have been one of the happiest lifeship crews among the seven hundred thousand. And it made me proud, for I felt I had chosen well. Only after Morgan Smith's name was there any sort of question mark.

 

 

As we were nearing Mars Stowe married Miss Wallace. The rest of us were faintly surprised, but realized when we thought about it that it was a good thing. Stowe was a little defiant, in case anyone suspected he had forgotten Mary, or that she hadn't meant much to him. But I think we all knew better. After all, it was a long time since Mary died.

 

 

Miss Wallace was really rather young for Stowe, but she didn't look it. We had always called her Miss Wallace; now, when she became Mrs. Stowe, we began to call her Caroline. It was only then that we learned her first name.

 

 

Her marriage was no more formal than those of Betty and Morgan, Leslie and me. But one automatically made the change and thought of her as Mrs. Stowe. That wasn't the case with the rest of us. Betty was just Betty, and I had never thought of Leslie as Mrs. Easson. If this casual marriage became common, I could see the custom of the woman taking the man's name dying out altogether. Miss Wallace wanted to be Mrs. Stowe, but Betty preferred to remain Betty Glessor, and Leslie, when she once signed her name in the log, signed it "Leslie Darby."

 

 

"Now I'm left all alone," said Sammy. "Will you marry me, Bessie?"

 

 

"Yes," said the child instantly, "if you'll stop looking so black."

 

 

 

 

 

 

8

 

 

Mars was big in the forward window now. The first of the three big questions was already settled.

 

 

The three questions were: Would the ship miss Mars? Would it take up an orbit around it? Would it crash plumb into it? I wanted them settled, if possible, before I did anything at all.

 

 

It was clear that the ship wasn't going to miss Mars. I had been spending hours in the control room looking at it and wishing I was a better pilot.

 

 

Spaceships at best -- I mean the regular spaceships -- can't afford extra people on board. The crew is always at a minimum. That means that in emergencies everyone must be able to do someone else's job. As well as being a radio officer I had been fourth pilot. I had taken up and landed ships -- big ships, ships they trusted me not to smash. But always I had an experienced pilot at my side, ready to take over. Always I'd had painstaking, quadruple-checked calculations on which I could and did trust the ship and my life and everybody else's life. Always, most important of all, I'd had plenty of fuel in reserve, so that if I was at all doubtful I could blast clear and try again.

 

 

In those circumstances I wasn't a bad pilot. I had been passed without hesitation -- indeed, with the utmost confidence -- as a lifeship pilot, and the question of further training and practice hadn't arisen. After all, seven hundred thousand pilots had to be found. If any had to be trained specially for the job, it certainly wasn't the few men who had actually flown a regular ship, ever.

 

 

But I knew that Mart Browne or Colin Mitchell, say, two of the pilots I'd worked with, would merely glance at the controls of the lifeship and at Mars and know exactly what they could do and what they couldn't. By feel they could put the ship in an orbit, with the fuel I had, if that seemed the best thing to do. And either of them, I felt, could have a healthy stab at the job of setting the ship down -- again, on the fuel I had.

 

 

Some lifeships would be lucky that way. They would have trained, experienced pilots, and men like that, given half a chance, would do the almost impossible. Others, perhaps, would be lucky in having in charge someone who didn't know the difficulties, someone who would come through without having any idea of the various disasters he'd just missed.

 

 

I had the little learning that was a dangerous thing. I knew what could be done, and I didn't know which of those things I could do and which I couldn't.

 

 

The effect of Mars's gravity wasn't really being felt yet. When it was, the ship would swing into position to blast against it.

 

 

"I don't see any ships coming out to help us," said Sammy, as we looked at the world that was to be our home or our grave.

 

 

"Write that off, Sammy," I said. "Take us as being the average ship. The average lifeship won't get any help -- only the lucky ones."

 

 

"I thought we were supposed to be one of the lucky ones, said Sammy, with a grin. Sammy was like that -- if others were optimistic, he was gloomy; if others were gloomy, he was cheerful.

 

 

"So we are lucky. Here we are, heading straight for Mars, taken all the way by three minutes' blast from Earth. That's luck. Nobody could count on it. But on the other hand, it's not by any means fantastic or incredible, considering that's precisely what they were planning for every lifeship, back on Earth, for months. I mean, if you aim for a clay pipe at a fairground and ring a gold watch, that's blind luck. But if you aim carefully for the gold watch, and get it, that's -- "

 

 

"I get your point. So we're not going to get any help?"

 

 

"Doesn't look like it. And it doesn't look at all likely that we're going to orbit, either. The course was too good. If we were going to miss Mars we might be captured by it -- but we're not."

 

 

"That leaves us to try for orbit or landing. Which is it going to be?"

 

 

"Landing," I said promptly.

 

 

Sammy raised his eyebrows. "Isn't the other the better chance?"

 

 

"Yes. But if we fail to orbit, we lose the chance to try to land soft. If we try to land . . . well, we certainly land. Depends how hard, that's all."

 

 

I had thought there would be all sorts of last-minute things to do, things to clear up. But I found myself suddenly, without warning, talking to everyone in the lounge and telling them the trip was over bar the question of success or failure.

 

 

"I never told you why I slammed on the acceleration when we were coming unstuck," I said, and there was sudden attention that I hadn't quite had until then. When I began to speak, they probably thought it was just Bill talking to them, not Lieutenant Easson. "I saw we weren't going to have enough fuel, and I tried to save some. You knew when Jim went to that other ship that he was looking for fuel, but I didn't say then that under no circumstances could the fuel I had land us safely on Mars."

 

 

"We guessed that, son," said Harry. "Bad news travels fast. I think we all knew. But thanks all the same. It was a nice thought."

 

 

I looked around at them. Yes, nobody seemed surprised. Betty was clutching Morgan tightly, as though, if they were close enough together, nothing could harm them. Leslie was playing with Bessie, and though I knew she was listening intently to what was going on, she showed no sign of it. Stowe nodded slowly, and clasped Caroline's hand. Jim couldn't help looking rather disappointed that everyone knew what he had been carefully guarding as a secret.

 

 

"Well, that saves a lot of trouble," I said briskly. "All right, get strapped up now and into your couches and be patient. I'm going to wait until I think the time's right, and then blast with all we've got in the way that gives us the best chance."

 

 

I looked at them intently. "It'll be cruel," I warned them. "Far worse than when we left Earth. You'll feel the floor's trying to push its way right through you. Don't think you have to bear it silently. Scream all you like -- it'll help."

 

 

"How many Gs will it be, Lieutenant Bill?" asked Jim, interested.

 

 

"I don't know, Jim. I'll tell you this -- it'll be more than the human frame is supposed to be able to stand. But that's something that's been put up time and again. Let's see if we can put it up once more. People who traveled at twelve miles an hour didn't have their heads blown off, remember."

 

 

"Will the linings stand it?" Jim asked.

 

 

I made a face at him. "Think about that after we land, Jim," I told him. "Just at the moment, please keep that and any other interesting questions to yourself."

 

 

"How long have we got?" asked Sammy.

 

 

"Plenty of time, I suppose, but better start strapping each other up now. There may not be as much time as I think."

 

 

Imprex was developed primarily for this job. It's a binding tape that sticks only to itself, easily torn off when there's no strain, and stronger and stronger as the strain is put on it. It's elastic and equalizes the strain against it throughout its length. For support against acceleration or deceleration, it's better than anything else.

 

 

I waited in the control room while Leslie helped the others, then came back to strap her up myself. That was the only time on the trip that Leslie got special consideration from me. I wanted to be sure that she was as well prepared to stand the deceleration as she could be.

 

 

She wanted to be with me in the control room, but we couldn't shift her couch in there. I taped her very carefully, probing delicately at the imprex and taking it off again if it was a fraction too tight or too loose.

 

 

"None of the others are done as carefully as this," Leslie whispered. "Shouldn't I . . . ?"

 

 

"It won't make all that difference," I said. "But while I've got a certain responsibility to you all, I feel I have a special responsibility for my wife."

 

 

 

 

Now I couldn't see Mars any more. It was beneath our jets as the ship dropped. I was letting it drop.

 

 

Mars had an air pressure of between six and seven pounds -- quite enough for life on a world that called for little effort. Since there wasn't any air until much nearer the surface, my altimeter was useless. I didn't know, couldn't know, exactly where we were in relation to Mars. My calculations were based on a constant speed, and checked by Phobos and Deimos, which I could see.

 

 

I had known all along that it was liable to be like this -- blasting for a short time, too little, too late. There had been dramatic last-minute rescue. None of us had been able to construct a superdrive out of the sole of a shoe and a couple of hairpins. We didn't, unfortunately, carry an amateur Einstein who was able to work out on the back of an envelope a way of landing safely without using any fuel at all.

 

 

Far from all this, what it came to in the end was that I sat with my hand poised over the firing button, waiting till it felt right to close it.

 

 

I've known men who trusted their lives to their instinct for the right moment. They did it because they had found it paid off. I only did it because I had to.

 

 

Now, I thought, and closed the switch. There was no sound. There was nothing outside for the blast to thunder against.

 

 

But I didn't miss sound in the welter of tortured vision, crushing gravity, drumming in my brain, and shooting pains. It was much worse than I had expected, worse than I had been able to imagine. My teeth ached, there was a fire in my belly, someone seemed to be tearing my skin off with pincers. There were sensations that I couldn't explain afterward.

 

 

It was a thousand tortures all at once. I remembered reading that some worlds were so dense that a steel bar would flow like liquid. I felt like the steel bar. I felt as if I was on the point of collapsing into the constituent elements of my body, but something was stubbornly holding me together to suffer more.

 

 

I never thought of the others below suffering the same thing. There comes a point when nothing exists but one's own pain -- it shuts out the rest of the universe.

 

 

I clung at first to the idea that this couldn't last long. Soon, however, I had to give that up. To the creature I had been before I started the blast, a few seconds were a mere breath of existence. But now every instant was an eternity of agony.

 

 

I was actually praying for the last dregs of fuel to be used up and the deceleration to stop. Instead of wishing we had more fuel I wished we had less and that the ordeal would be over.

 

 

I watched the dials every millimeter of the way. I split their remaining traverse into imaginary divisions, so that I could tell myself: Now there's only a quarter to go. An eighth. A sixteenth. A thirty-second . . .

 

 

I prepared myself for the awful moment of helplessness I'd been anticipating the whole trip -- the moment when the drive stopped and the ship went on and I couldn't do a thing about it. I was both dreading it and waiting impatiently for it. When the needles touched the mark my impatience for the ordeal to be over had almost won, and I tried to draw in a breath of thankfulness.

 

 

But it didn't come, for though the instruments said the fuel was finished -- the blast went on.

 

 

I looked around the dials again, thinking that under the strain I had miscalculated. There wasn't a simple 30-20-10-0 type of gauge -- you had to balance two or three things to calculate the actual quantity of fuel left. I was still right. There was no fuel left.

 

 

And the drive still went on.

 

 

So there was a safety margin. After all, there might be enough. In one blinding instant I experienced every emotion I had ever experienced in my life. There was wild hope that we were going to be safe after all. There was fury that we had been tricked, that all my calculations had been ruined by this revelation that there had been something in reserve. There was an apathetic desire that we would crash and die and it would all be over. There was misery, self-pity, regret, disgust, fear.

 

 

Everything that was in me was being squeezed out. I was an organ on which every stop was out, every note sounding together in shattering cacophony. I realized that if I lived through this any horror that ever happened to me subsequently would be a pale ghost beside it -- but that thought was swept away by the passionate conviction that no one, nothing, could live through this. I was dead, we were all dead, squirming in our last agony like a crushed insect.

 

 

And then, unexpectedly, came a blessed release. The torture went on, but it suddenly seemed unimportant. I could think again. I could wonder whether the extra fuel was a mere accident, the result of faulty equipment on the lifeship, or if it was a deliberately concealed reserve which every lifeship had, a safety margin to turn the impossible into the just barely possible. I could think of Leslie and hope fervently that what had happened to Mary Stowe hadn't happened to her. I could marvel that our rocket linings had stood the strain. I could think gleefully of what I might, after all, be able to say to Sammy about whether we had been lucky or not.

 

 

And just as I realized that the thousand-to-one chance had swelled and swelled until it threatened to explode, we crashed. I had time to appreciate no more than the fact that we were down, when I bounced out of the couch as if I'd fallen on it from a great height, and smashed the dials in front of me with my face.

 

 

 

 

When I became conscious again, two things registered at once, jamming each other. There was gravity; and I couldn't see. For a second or two they fought with each other, then a feeling of peace and relief flowed over me.

 

 

Even before I knew I wasn't blind, I realized that I'd much rather be alive and blind than not alive at all. So it was with real pleasure that I found that even through closed eyelids and bandages I could see light. It must be bright. This was Mars, lit by the new, brighter sun.

 

 

I moved, and though I was sore all over it was quite a pleasant soreness -- like rest after long, back-breaking labor. My arms, my legs, my head, everything moved. I was in bed, and the sheets were cool.

 

 

"Leslie," I said. I don't know how I knew she was there, but I did. I drew my arms clear of the sheets, ignoring the stiffness, reached out -- and Leslie was in them.

 

 

"Bill," she whispered. I sensed her bending over me, and her lips brushed mine lightly. I felt her anxiously. She had an arm in a sling, but as far as her knees I couldn't feel anything else wrong.

 

 

"No, I'm all right," she said. "So are you, except for perhaps a scar or two that'll make you look distinguished."

 

 

For long seconds we just held each other. But then I had to ask:

 

 

"How many of us are safe?"

 

 

She laughed breathlessly. "All," she said. "Every one. Sammy, Harry, Bessie, Morgan, Betty, the Stowes. And you and me. The lifeship didn't come through too well, but . . ."

 

 

"The other ships?" I demanded. "How many of them are getting through?"

 

 

"Hundreds," she said lightly. "They're dropping all over Mars. Most of them are dropping too hard, though. Don't think of that now, Bill. We don't know the picture yet. We don't know how many lifeships are going to land safely, but you were right enough -- it can only be one out of quite a lot."

 

 

She laughed again, and I felt her lay her cheek against my bandaged face.

 

 

"Still, with you piloting the ship, how could we help but be the one?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One Too Many

 

 

 

 

1

 

 

"You and I ought to be friends, Bill," said Alec Ritchie, in his usual good-humored tone, "because the two best-looking girls in what's left of the human race come and visit us."

 

 

I grinned involuntarily. "Is that a good reason?" I asked. "Anyway, I didn't know I was being unfriendly."

 

 

"You weren't," Ritchie said cheerfully, "but you don't like me and you make only halfhearted attempts to hide it."

 

 

I didn't answer that, because it was perfectly true. Ritchie was one of those fortyish, stocky, even-tempered men who laugh a lot with their faces but never with their eyes, and whom hardly anyone ever does like very much. Lieutenant Porter was dead, killed in the lifeship crash that had broken Ritchie's leg, but he probably hadn't liked Ritchie either. Why he had chosen Ritchie and brought him to Mars was all too obvious. Ritchie's daughter Aileen was almost certainly one of the two most beautiful girls on Mars, just as he said.

 

 

Whether Leslie was the other I couldn't say. I was biased. Besides, I hadn't seen all the others. Neither had Ritchie, but he was evidently prepared to guess. I imagined he would al- ways be ready to guess, particularly if there was any percentage in it. Coming to Mars would have made no difference to that.

 

 

Earth by this time was dead, boiled sterile. Ritchie and I were two of the few thousand lucky people who had not only got a place on one of the lifeships but had also landed safely on Mars. Fairly safely, anyway.

 

 

And Mars?

 

 

Take one small, moribund planet, cold, dry, brittle, dark, and cheerless. Turn on spit for two months, one complete turn every twenty-four and a half hours. Serve piping hot to fourteen thousand hungry and uncritical guests just in from space.

 

 

And don't blame any remarks they may make on Emily Post.

 

 

When all that extra heat from the new, brighter sun first hit Mars, practically all the water on the planet, whether it was ice, liquid, or mixed with the dust of erosion in the dull, bodiless mud of Mars, had been lifted right up into the atmosphere. A lot of the dust went with it. There were black clouds, sandstorms, dust storms, and, as soon as the particle-laden water vapor hit streams of colder air, torrents of muddy rain. It couldn't have been an altogether pleasant time for the seven thousand people who had been on Mars at the time -- the colony which had existed before the big migration became necessary.

 

 

But at that time I had been mainly concerned with getting my lifeship and the ten people in it to Mars, whatever the conditions there were like. That was enough to worry about without looking for more.

 

 

Well, I'd done that. That worry was over. Now all I wanted to do was stay in bed for twenty years or so, smiling modestly when people came to visit me and tell me what a magnificent job I'd done.

 

 

Sammy came to visit me and told me: "You've been swinging the lead long enough, Bill. While you still had those bandages over your eyes there might have been some excuse, but now it's high time you stopped malingering and started earning your keep."

 

 

Behind me, Ritchie laughed uproariously. "That's telling him," he spluttered happily.

 

 

"This is a private discussion, mister," said Sammy coldly. "Bill's a friend of mine. We've been through a lot. We understand each other. If we did happen to want your opinion, we'd ask for it."

 

 

Sammy clearly didn't like Ritchie either. Ritchie merely laughed again. He never lost his temper.

 

 

"Where's Leslie?" I asked Sammy.

 

 

"She's working, pinhead. Don't you know yet only one can get away from the job at a time? Work Party No. 94 can't spare two people to come and hold your hand, even if you are pretending to be dying."

 

 

"What's the job you're doing?"

 

 

"Digging holes," said Sammy succinctly.

 

 

"And filling them in again?" I asked, because that seemed to be the implication.

 

 

"No, we don't have to do that. The wind does it for us."

 

 

"Who's in charge?"

 

 

"Of the whole show, or just 94?"

 

 

In the hospital we didn't know much about the general situation. No one had time to explain it to us.

 

 

"You tell me, Sammy," I suggested, "taking it I know but nothing."

 

 

"You don't have to tell me that," Sammy assured me. "You always were an ignorant cuss. Well, such government as there is at the moment is on the additive principle. You know, you start with a hut, build two rooms onto it, then a corridor all around, then an east wing, then a hall, a west wing, some more corridors and an annex, all carefully planned so that every time you want to go to the lavatory you have to go up and down six flights of stairs and walk three miles along passages.

 

 

"Viz -- the original colony had its own administration, of course, and when the big spaceships got here the top brass added themselves onto that, and when the lifeships arrived the lieutenants were added onto that, so that now -- "

 

 

He interrupted himself and asked belligerently: "Do you follow that, or can't you understand a simple explanation?"

 

 

I grinned. "Now tell me who's in charge of 94."

 

 

"Me, until they throw you out of here. Leslie, when I'm not around."

 

 

"So I'm still the boss, am I?"

 

 

"I wouldn't say that, but you're still supposed to take the rap for anything that goes wrong, if that's what you mean. Lifeship crews are staying together as units, lieutenants in charge. Sometimes a work party wants a different lieutenant, or a lieutenant wants a different work party, and there's a switch. But that isn't happening often."

 

 

"Surprising," I commented, "but good to hear all the same."

 

 

"You mean, Sammy," said Ritchie from the next bed, "that as far as the work parties are concerned these so-called lieutenants are still the little tin gods -- no chance for anyone else to step in and run things? No offense, Bill."

 

 

Sammy turned a cold eye on Ritchie again. "I thought I told you this was a private discussion," he observed. "And my name's Hoggan."

 

 

"Pleased to meet you," said Ritchie affably. "My name's Ritchie."

 

 

Sammy's sense of humor almost got the better of him. He nearly laughed. He was hard put to it to remember he didn't like Ritchie and retort bluntly: "All right, Ritchie. You have my permission to exist. But do it quietly, will you? I want to talk to Bill."

 

 

"Go ahead," said Ritchie airily.

 

 

Sammy stared at him for a moment, then turned back to me. "Seriously," he said, "there isn't much need for government just now, and by the time we do need it there'll be something better. On the whole, things would be all right but for -- Holy Moses, what's this?"

 

 

We looked around at a sudden uproar of whistles and wolf calls from the other men in the ward. Sammy hadn't heard it before, but I had. It meant Leslie or Aileen had just come in.

 

 

This time it was Leslie. She hurried along the ward, paying no attention to the chorus of approbation, and stopped at the foot of my bed.

 

 

"I need you, Sammy," she said breathlessly, ignoring me. "It's Morgan again."

 

 

"What's he doing now?" Sammy sighed, hoisting himself up in a way that showed how glad he must have been to sit down.

 

 

"It's what he's not doing," she told him. "I've done all I can, with no result. Now you'll have to come and clout his ear."

 

 

"You might have done that yourself, without bothering me," Sammy grumbled. "Surely you didn't let a little thing like that stop you?"

 

 

"That" was the sling supporting her right arm.

 

 

"Frankly, I did," said Leslie. "Morgan's looking ugly." She took a couple of quick steps, bent over, and pecked me briefly on the cheek. There was uproar in the ward again. Then she hustled Sammy out. Apart from that quick peck she hadn't even glanced at me.

 

 

And odd though it might seem, I was pleased. I hadn't thought Leslie was going to be as businesslike and brisk and good at handling people as it seemed she was. I should have known, I suppose. She had been a schoolteacher, and handling twenty to thirty boisterous kids was probably good practice for handling a work party.

 

 

So Morgan Smith was giving trouble again, which meant he had been giving trouble before.

 

 

"Who's this fellow who's making a nuisance of himself?" asked Ritchie curiously.

 

 

"Morgan Smith. Why?"

 

 

"Oh, sometimes it's useful to know about people who make a nuisance of themselves."

 

 

I grunted and went back to my thoughts.

 

 

Morgan had been a gamble, but so had they all. I had known all along the risk that some of the men and women I chose, instead of being the people who most deserved to live, would be the people above all who should have been left behind.

 

 

Sammy hadn't been serious, I knew, when he said I was malingering, but when I looked around the ward it seemed that everyone else there was so much more seriously hurt than I was that it was high time I was up and earning my keep, as Sammy said. Besides, if there was any strong-arm stuff to be done in my work party, I should be the one to do it. Sammy was tough enough, but slightly built. Leslie, normally, could look after herself, but not with a broken ulna. John Stowe and Harry Phillips were much older than Morgan. I was the only one so much stronger and tougher than Morgan that he'd be ill advised to give me any trouble.

 

 

No one seemed to he asleep. I bellowed: "Nurse!"

 

 

She appeared at once, a rather hard-faced woman who had once, I believed, been matron of a big London hospital. When she saw who had called for her she frowned. We knew she had three other wards to look after. We weren't supposed to bother her more than we could help, and people like me weren't supposed to bother her at all.

 

 

"I know you're busy, Nurse," I said. "I just want to remove myself from your charge. Seems there's trouble in my work party, and . . ."

 

 

"Lieutenant," she said wearily, "there's trouble in every work party. People don't like working fourteen hours a day. When you join your group, you'll have to give orders, and you'll have to be fit."

 

 

"I know, but . . ."

 

 

"People who can't take orders generally aren't very good at giving them. Wait till the doctor sees you. When he says you can go, you'll go."

 

 

She didn't wait to hear what I had to say to this, but made her way out of the ward again.

 

 

"That seems to be that," said Ritchie.

 

 

I ignored him.

 

 

Now that I knew I had to stay where I was, I was even more impatient to get out of the hospital. Things were going on; Mars was being reshaped, my ex-crew, now Work Party 94, was working on a job, and I wasn't with them.

 

 

The rain started again soon after that. Considering how little water there was on Mars, compared with Earth, it was astonishing what the planet could do with it. I hadn't seen the rain yet, for there were no windows in our ward, but I'd heard it. Often.

 

 

None of us in the ward knew at first hand what conditions outside were like, for the recent history of all of us was the same. We had all been injured in lifeship landings on Mars, and brought straight to the hospital.

 

 

This time the rain sounded worse than usual. I wasn't surprised when Leslie came back and the whistles sounded again.

 

 

Men are like that. Some of the patients in the ward were pretty badly smashed up, but show them an attractive girl and they'd holler and whistle, just to show they weren't dead yet. Even those who moaned and whined and tossed about at other times made a gallant effort to look happy and well when Leslie or Aileen was in the ward. That sort of thing could give you a lump in the throat if you let it.

 

 

"We've knocked off for a bit," Leslie told me, sitting on the bed. There was nowhere else to sit. "We couldn't do anything. We can hardly see." She sighed. "I'll be glad when you're back, Bill."

 

 

"I tried to get out of here but was slapped down. What exactly is the trouble, Leslie? What's wrong?"

 

 

She pulled herself together and smiled brightly -- the too quick smile of so many women when the last thing they feel like doing is smiling. "Oh, nothing really," she said. "Don't bother about it now. Just get well, Bill, and don't worry. We'll be all right."

 

 

"Tell me," I insisted.

 

 

She hesitated, then it all came out in a rush. "It's not one thing, Bill. It's about a hundred things, all piling up. It's the rain, and the winds, and the dust, and the heat. Sand and dust in everything, grit in your mouth and eyes and hair. It's the work -- digging out foundations for buildings, and the wind filling them with sand and dust. Everybody grumbling, saying the same things over and over again. It's trying to sleep in a corridor, packed like sardines, with the sweat running all over you."

 

 

She tried to stop, but the words came pouring out of her. "Then there's the food, things you can't identify, things that taste like string. No milk. No coffee. No eggs. No meat. No hot drinks, because water boils when it's lukewarm. Washing in muddy water, because we've only enough clean water for drinking and cooking.

 

 

"Everybody coming to you with their troubles. Betty afraid that with all this work she's going to lose her baby. Little Bessie always in the way. Jim working far too hard, the only one we have to stop working sometimes. People from other crews trying to drag us into their quarrels. Back-breaking days that go on and on and on until you really believe there's never going to be an end to them, though you're so tired your brain's buzzing. Being hot, cold, drenched, parched, tired, and restless, all within an hour or so. Oh, I could scream!"

 

 

"Don't scream here," I said, "but cry if you like -- you might enjoy that better than screaming."

 

 

"I expect so," Leslie said moodily, "but you need training to cry in front of all these people, and I haven't got it. Any- way, there's all that, and Morgan."

 

 

"Yes?" I said. "What about Morgan?"

 

 

"Morgan's a kind of last straw. I don't really mind the weather or the food or sleeping with nineteen other women, because no one can do anything about it. And the work's got to be done. There can't be any improvements until we've put up more buildings, grown more crops, and all the rest of it. But Morgan . . ."

 

 

"Well, what's he doing?" I asked a little impatiently.

 

 

She shook her head. "Wait till you see for yourself."

 

 

"Why the mystery? If he's a nuisance, he must be doing something. What is it?"

 

 

"Just being a heel," said Leslie, "in every possible, conceivable way. He's making Betty's life hell, though the poor kid tries to hide it. Whatever he ought to do, he does the exact opposite. No, I knew I couldn't describe it so you'd understand. You'll know soon enough."

 

 

She looked up as Aileen came in to see Ritchie. She and Aileen nodded to each other.

 

 

"You know her?" I murmured.

 

 

"She's in 92, working near us. And she's one of the nineteen women I sleep with. After eight hours crushed up against someone, you feel you know her."

 

 

I grinned. "I know it's easy for me to be cheerful," I said, "but is everything really as black as all that? Just look back. On Earth all that mattered was getting a place on a lifeship. People would have given anything for that."

 

 

"I know," she said gloomily. "You needn't remind me how I tried to bribe you."

 

 

She must really he feeling low if she took it that way. I pretended she hadn't said anything.

 

 

"Then when we were on the lifeship," I went on quickly, "we just wanted to get safely to Mars. Nothing else mattered. Even if we'd been told about this, we'd have thought it was heaven. Now we're here, and in no immediate danger any more, yet we're -- "

 

 

"I know," she said, still in the same gloomy tone. "We're waiting for something worse. At least, I am. Can you blame me, Bill? All along we've thought -- if only we get through this all right, everything will be wonderful. And it never is."

 

 

"When something like this happens," I said quietly, "no one has any right to think things are going to be wonderful. You have to be satisfied just to be alive. After a big smack like this, things even out only gradually. You've got to be patient."

 

 

I grinned again. "It's just as well I know you, Leslie, or I'd be doing you an injustice. You're only unloading all this on me because you've been cheerfully accepting everything that everybody else unloaded on you. You feel you ought to have a chance to moan about things too."

 

 

She smiled despite herself. "There may be something in that. Oh, damn, hear that? I think the rain's off. I'll have to go back."

 

 

She stood up straight with an effort. "Hurry and come back, Bill," she said. "I miss you."

 

 

"That's nice," I said. "But do it with moderation. Don't miss me too much."

 

 

Aileen didn't go when Leslie did. Apparently it was Aileen's rest period. With Leslie gone, I looked idly at Aileen, who was talking quietly with Ritchie.

 

 

She was certainly a good-looking girl, rather like Leslie in some ways. They were both blondes for a start, Aileen very light, Leslie a deeper gold. Neither of them was the model type. They both had the slim waist and long, slender legs of a model, but they didn't have the exaggeration of breast and hip. They both looked intelligent -- in fact, intelligent rather than pretty. And they moved with the same lithe assurance.

 

 

The redheaded youth across from me kept trying to catch Aileen's eye and making mildly erotic gestures. That sort of thing never bothered Leslie, but it was obviously annoying Aileen. I heard her murmur to Ritchie: "So help me, I'm going to blister that character's ears on my way out." Ritchie chuckled.

 

 

I noticed that Aileen and Ritchie never touched each other. Her manner toward him was more that of a rather nervous secretary than of a loving daughter.

 

 

When at last Aileen rose to go, she looked across at the red-haired youth, obviously intending to go over and tell him what she thought of him.

 

 

"Aileen!" I said sharply.

 

 

She turned, a little startled. She had never spoken to me. But when I beckoned she came and bent over me.

 

 

"He's going to die tonight or tomorrow night," I said quietly.

 

 

She straightened abruptly. "Oh," she said, and her face went pink. "Thanks for telling me -- Lieutenant Easson, isn't it?"

 

 

I nodded. She walked away along the ward. She must have flashed a friendly smile at the redhead, from the reaction of the other men in the ward, but as her back was to me I didn't see it.

 

 

Ritchie grinned. "Why did you have to spoil it?" he asked playfully. "Why didn't you let her blister his ears and then find out?"

 

 

I frowned. "You think that would have been funny?" I asked incredulously.

 

 

"Yes. But then, I've been told I have a peculiar sense of humor."

 

 

"You have," I told him, and pointedly looked away. I heard Ritchie chuckle, meaninglessly.

 

 

 

 

The doctor wouldn't clear me that day, or the next. The day after that I was given my clothes and told I could go, but to take it easy.

 

 

The way it was said made it clear that it was said from habit, not because the doctor thought I would take it easy, or that anyone could afford to nurse himself with things as they were.

 

 

Before I went, when it was known I was going, Ritchie made me a proposition.

 

 

"Ever struck you, Bill, that this is the greatest chance ever for smart businessmen?" he asked.

 

 

"What is?"

 

 

"The setup here. Rebuilding. Starting again. It's better than getting in on the ground floor. It's a chance to move into the basement."

 

 

"Money doesn't exist any more," I said shortly, a little disgusted at the idea of making capital out of mankind's greatest disaster.

 

 

Ritchie shrugged his heavy shoulders. "What's money? All that ever mattered was what you could get for it. This is a chance to get it. Now, you're still a lieutenant, Bill. You have power, and any little piece of power you have is a chance to get more. If you and I work together, starting not when it's too late, but right now -- "

 

 

"Not interested," I said flatly. I was going to say more, angrily, but Ritchie's smooth, pleasant voice cut in.

 

 

"Listen, Bill, I understand your idealism. I like you for it. But don't you see what's going to happen? If you're not ambitious, someone else will be. You want to make Mars a safe place, a good place. Fine. And while you're doing it someone will be building himself up so that when you've made Mars a safe place, a good place, he'll be able to step in and take it from you."

 

 

I stared at him.

 

 

"I'm not suggesting," said Ritchie earnestly, "that you shouldn't work for the good of everybody. Of course you will. But don't forget, while you're doing it, that human beings aren't perfect. Don't forget that you can't rely on everyone to be as honest and unselfish and idealistic as you. Look after your interests -- no one else will. Come in with me, help me, and you and I will -- "

 

 

"You're making quite a lot of sense," I said, "but the answer's still no. Build your own empire, Ritchie."

 

 

"All right," said Ritchie evenly. "I will."

 

 

So before I was even out of the hospital I should have been pretty well prepared for the many battles which I knew were coming. I knew about Mars, though not at first hand. I knew about the people who were trying to make it a world fit to live in. I knew about Morgan Smith. And I knew about Alec Ritchie. I wouldn't have had to be much of a prophet to have a general picture of what was going to happen.

 

 

I wasn't much of a prophet. Or I didn't think. What happened hardly ever found me better prepared than anyone else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2

 

 

When I came out of the hospital, alone, I stood still for a long time at the door and just looked around me.

 

 

This was the future home of the human race -- now and for a long time to come. Mercury, Venus, and Earth would be too hot for human beings for millions of years. Science would have to advance about twice as far as it had already come from zero before Jupiter or any of the other outer planets could be forced to provide a comfortable environment for mankind. There would be little settlements, undoubtedly, on asteroids and satellites. But now and for untold generations Mars was the only place for men and women to live.

 

 

That made grumbles about the world itself absolutely pointless. It was now of purely academic interest that there had once been a world on which water boiled at 100° C.

 

 

If the pre-space-travel calculations had been correct and Mars had had an atmosphere too thin and with too little oxygen to support human life, human life would simply have ceased to exist when the sun underwent its change. As it was, we could only be thankful that Mars had just enough air, water, and whatever else we needed to enable us to live fairly comfortably on it until we were once more in a position to take command of our environment.

 

 

That wouldn't be soon. We had left a highly mechanized culture back on Earth, but it would be some time before we had climbed to the same point on Mars. For a year or two at least things would be very primitive. Hydroelectric power was out of the question, and the use of oil, gasoline, or coal for generating electricity was just as impracticable. We simply had to use the new source of power, the one we didn't know very much about -- atomic power.

 

 

That meant that there would be plenty of power when we had any at all.

 

 

Nuclear physics had come a long way since the time when the power of the atom could only be used to make a big bang. But it hadn't come anywhere near the beautiful simplicity of really efficient technology. Atom power was still huge, clumsy, and uncertain.

 

 

None of the spaceships was atom-powered. It was a pity, in a way, that such a wonder fuel as moluone had been discovered, back in the fifties. Instead of having to plug away at atomic power to make space travel possible, the interplanetary pioneers had turned their backs on it, since they didn't need it, and now we had to start from scratch. Moluone was a wonder fuel for space travel, all right, but it was no earthly use for ground-based industry. If there had been just one experimental atom-powered ship, it might have saved twenty thousand people ten years of toil.

 

 

I sighed and moved away from the door of the research station. People were going in and coming out, and I was in the way. Nobody paid any attention to me, apart from a few people who glanced curiously at my uniform, as if they had never seen such a thing before.

 

 

Nobody else was wearing anything like my uniform, certainly. Every other person I saw, of either sex, wore a sort of smock, except a few men who wore only shorts. The improvised garment which was so generally worn was like shorts and a sleeveless shirt except that it was in one piece. If existing shorts and shirts were used, they were sewn together at the waist. So far I didn't know why. There was seldom any attempt, even in the case of the women, to make the one-piece suits attractive. There were none with halter tops or bare backs or low necklines. They were plain and strong and simple. But of course the girls who were attractive looked attractive anyway.

 

 

I made my way slowly to where Party 94 was working. I'd been told where to go. No one around had so little to do that he had time to come and show me the way. As I went I continued my first survey of the Martian scene.

 

 

There had been a colony of about seven thousand people on Mars before the disaster. That didn't seem many now, but it had been a lot when Mars was a dead world, a mere research station for astronomers, physicists, metallurgists, geologists, archaeologists, botanists, and scores of other ists.

 

 

With all the people that the regular spaceships and the lifeships had been able to bring from the doomed Earth in the time available, there still weren't many more than twenty thousand people on Mars, including all the ists.

 

 

From the short-term point of view, it was just as well that there weren't any more. The fact that there had been permanent accommodation for seven thousand people for a start meant that there was some sort of temporary accommodation for the whole twenty thousand.

 

 

The settlement had been called Winant, after the first man to land on Mars, and it looked as if the town that was going to grow up around it would be called Winant too. So many people had so many different ideas about what to call the first Martian township that the easiest way out of the impasse seemed to be to use the existing name.

 

 

The Winant scene was typical of all Mars. The sun was bright, surrounded and diffused by a strong haze. Mars would always have a lot of dust in the atmosphere. It was warm but not unbearably hot; the air generally was so dry that people could be comfortable at much higher temperatures than could have been borne on Earth. The smaller effort that the reduced gravity called for was another thing that made the heat bearable.

 

 

The sky was deep, luminous blue -- deeper than it had ever been on Earth. The ground was colorful, though flat and almost featureless -- red, yellow, green, and brown. Most of the rocks near the surface had been worn long ago into sand and dust. But here and there were little ridges of rock and stone, eroded to mere remnants of the mountains they must once have been.

 

 

Mars hadn't had an earthquake for millions of years. The ground surface was very much as it must have been in the time of the first Cro-Magnon on Earth. There was nothing much to see on Mars itself -- there never was. The only native form of life was plant life, lichen and a few varieties of moss. There was plenty of that.

 

 

Anything of interest had to be supplied by the people from Earth. Around Winant there was plenty. First there were the long, flat buildings of the research station, built not for this new Mars but for the cold, dark, sterile world Mars had been before the sun stepped up its output. There were hardly any windows.

 

 

All around the station buildings were piles of equipment, stones, metal from broken-up lifeships, stores of all kinds -- mostly fastened down firmly so that the gales, of which there was no sign at present, couldn't scatter them all over the landscape. Drawn up behind the station were about a hundred lifeships, being used for temporary accommodation. Behind them again were the larger spaceships, the ships that had been in existence before the emergency was known.

 

 

Among the ships were corralled the cattle which had been brought from Earth. It seemed crazy to bring cattle to Mars instead of human beings, but unless such provision had been made we would have had to manage henceforth without meat, milk, leather, and wool. As it was, we had none of these things at the moment; we couldn't allow the cattle to breed until we had fodder for them. They ate the sparse Martian lichen, but it wasn't enough. They needed Earth-type grass, which was only now being introduced to Mars.

 

 

In front of the station, about a hundred yards from it, thousands of people were engaged on what looked already like vast excavations. We had heard blasting frequently in the hospital.

 

 

I stopped a tall girl who was on her way toward the huge hole in the rock. "What's going on there?" I asked.

 

 

Miraculously, even here she was chewing something. It couldn't be gum; there wasn't any.

 

 

"Just out of the hospital, Lieutenant?" she said in the well-remembered accents of Brooklyn. "You want to know what we're doing? We're digging out a cliff face. When we've got it, we're going to dig caves in it. Now I got to run."

 

 

"Thanks," I said.

 

 

"You're welcome," said Brooklyn.

 

 

There was more sense in it than appeared at first. We could live on the surface, but we wanted greater atmospheric pressure if we could get it. We could get it, by digging for it. A mile or two down, conditions would be appreciably nearer what we were used to. Besides, long ago our ancestors had found that caves made very comfortable houses. Dig a hole in a perpendicular face of rock, find some way of closing it behind you, and you have a very fair house.

 

 

But I had spent long enough getting my bearings in this new world. I picked my way among the piles of material in search of Work Party 94. I was lightheaded, stiff, a little uncertain on my feet, and had a dull ache in my temples. But in what proportion my lightheadedness was owing to the light air pressure of Mars and to my convalescence I didn't know. My lungs weren't troubled at all. There was slightly more oxygen in the Martian mixture than there had been in the Terran variety of air. Some of it had been released recently by the extra heat warming the many surface oxides.

 

 

When I found 94 I didn't have time for any greetings. Harry Phillips, Caroline and Jim Stowe turned and saw me. They didn't show any sign of welcome, only of relief.

 

 

Harry said: "Son, I think you'd better get around the back fast."

 

 

"What's the matter?"

 

 

"If I were you I wouldn't waste any time finding out."

 

 

I didn't. "Around the back" was behind a stone wall about ten feet high. I was still unsteady, but on Mars I could run. I did run.

 

 

Morgan had his back to me. I could see Leslie's face over his shoulder, but not, at first, what he was doing. She didn't see me either. She was scared.

 

 

Then I saw Morgan was picking and pulling and jabbing at her injured arm, holding her other wrist so that she couldn't get away. He wasn't so much hurting her as trying to frighten her, and in that he was succeeding very well.

 

 

I didn't rush in at once. I waited until I was quite sure what was going on, and that Morgan wasn't merely defending himself against some ill-considered attack by Leslie, and until I was good and mad. Then I stepped forward, swung Morgan around, and planted my fist hard on his nose. What happened was more of a surprise to me than to him.

 

 

I had grown used to the light gravity of Mars but hadn't had much opportunity to learn all its effects. With the force of the blow Morgan and I staggered away from each other. Morgan was the one who was unlucky. His foot caught on a stone and he went over hard, the force of his fall being caused more by his momentum than by gravity. I saw he was out and turned to Leslie.

 

 

"Where's Sammy?" I demanded.

 

 

"At the stores." She pushed back her disheveled hair and straightened herself abruptly as if to shake the fright out of herself. "He can't always be around. Glad to see you, Bill."

 

 

"Has this sort of thing happened often?"

 

 

She shrugged. "All the time, more or less. Not that exactly, but something like it."

 

 

"But why don't the rest of you gang up on Morgan?"

 

 

She shrugged again. "We have, occasionally. He always gets his own back. So generally we don't."

 

 

I exploded. "For heaven's sake! Morgan's just a cheap would-be tough guy. He can't build himself up into a menace unless you let him."

 

 

"Not," said Leslie patiently, "if you happen to be stronger than he is. We're not."

 

 

"Two of you are.

 

 

"If there're two around. You don't know much about the ordinary, typical child bully, do you, Bill? I do. He doesn't do anything when he isn't going to get away with it. Little Jimmy comes home crying, and Johnny gets a beating. Next day Johnny takes it out of little Jimmy. And this time little Jimmy knows better than to come home crying and blame it on Johnny. That's Morgan -- a naughty boy, cruel, selfish, and petty, grown up physically but not mentally. He likes people to be afraid of him. He has to show he's the boss. He -- "

 

 

I shook my head brusquely. "If that's all we'll soon knock it out of him."

 

 

"There speaks," said Leslie ironically, "the bigger and stronger boy."

 

 

"I don't say you can beat consideration for others into someone who doesn't have any. But you can make him toe the line, and that's what Morgan will have to do."

 

 

"All right," said Leslie with a wry grin. "You try it."

 

 

"I will," I said. "Better have a look and make sure he hasn't broken his skull."

 

 

"I sincerely hope he has."

 

 

Morgan came to as we looked at him. His eyes burned at me. He didn't have to say anything. His look spoke his hate.

 

 

"Watch your step, Morgan," I warned him. "From what I hear it's no good appealing to your better nature. So I'll just say the next time I find you stepping out of line I'll beat the hell out of you. Now get back to work."

 

 

"Work!" he exclaimed, his voice quivering with impotent resentment. Blood was streaming from his nose and he nursed his ankle theatrically. "How can I -- "

 

 

"That's for you to find out," I said dispassionately. "If you're not up in five seconds I'll kick you in the ribs."

 

 

He was up and around the other side of the storage pile well inside the five seconds, limping dramatically but moving quickly all the same.

 

 

"That may be the way to treat him," Leslie admitted. "If he's scared of you, you may be able to handle him. But don't count on it. I've had twisted kids -- the more you beat Johnny, the more he had to beat little Jimmy. If you half killed Johnny, that was just too bad for little Jimmy."

 

 

"What's the answer?"

 

 

She shook her head. "There isn't an answer. At least, the only answer's in psychotherapy, and pretty well hidden at that."

 

 

"This time there was another answer," I said, frowning. "Not bringing Morgan along. I should have found it."

 

 

She'd been arguing with me, but at that she changed sides at once. "You couldn't know everything, Bill," she said warmly. "It's not your fault that Morgan -- "

 

 

"If bringing Morgan here was a mistake," I said, "it was my mistake. We argued about this before, back on Earth, and we didn't agree then. You thought all the biggest, the best, the greatest, the cleverest people should come along. I thought -- "

 

 

"You were right, Bill. You were supposed to pick ten decent, ordinary people, and Morgan looked like a decent, ordinary person."

 

 

I nodded, and we didn't say any more about the matter. But I went on thinking about it, as I went back with her and found where everybody was and what they were doing, and what I was supposed to do.

 

 

The disaster had been a great chance to build a really worth-while community. Back on Earth we'd always had the excuse that we couldn't destroy the criminals, the insane, the psychotics, and the weak-minded, and so we could never have a perfect community. When the disaster came, we lieutenants had had that chance. We could just quietly ignore the criminals, the insane, the psychotics, and the weak-minded, and make sure that if we didn't have saints we had at least eliminated the worst of the sinners. And I hadn't taken that chance, apparently.

 

 

Leslie obviously thought Morgan was bad through and through. I hoped she was wrong.

 

 

In a way, all Mars, the whole future of the human race, depended on the lieutenants' choice. Decent, reasonable people would build a decent, reasonable community -- and it would go on being what it was at the start. The future isn't what happens to happen, remote, untouchable. The future is what we have now, what we do, what we want, what we are.

 

 

The future was Leslie, Sammy, the Austrian doctor at the hospital, Alec Ritchie, the gum-chewing girl from Brooklyn -- and Morgan.

 

 

I hoped it was a good future. I wasn't going to judge Morgan on hearsay -- even on what Leslie said. I would give him every chance.

 

 

However, from what I'd seen I could only hope that a future with Morgan in it would be a good future. I couldn't count on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3

 

 

Things for the most part went fairly smoothly. It's not worth detailing all the jobs Work Party 94 did; there were too many of them, and we rarely saw much of anyone. It was a pity the different work parties couldn't be taken into the planning more and given some over-all impression of the work they were helping to do. People work better when they have a clear purpose and a set goal.

 

 

But there was no time for explanations yet. It was a case of "Do this until I tell you to stop," "Carry all that stuff from here to there," "Dig here until someone comes and tells you what else to do," and after a long, backbreaking day of toil in which nothing obvious was accomplished, a hot, stuffy, restless night in one of the corridors at the research station.

 

 

The nights were worse than the days. As far as temperature was concerned, there was no happy medium. Outside, it was below freezing; inside, the ventilating system planned to cope with seven thousand people labored hopelessly in its efforts to supply fresh, clean, cool air for three times that number.

 

 

We split up at night. Sammy and Harry Phillips were in one of the annexes with no less than ninety-eight other single men. Bessie was in one children's dormitory, Jim Stowe in another -- the best accommodation naturally went to growing children. Leslie's status had changed since I left the hospital. She and I, the Stowes, and three other couples shared a tiny room which had once been a reading room -- but nobody had any time for reading any more. Betty and Morgan were with five other couples in another tiny room somewhere.

 

 

I wondered sometimes how the research station staff, the people who had been there before the disaster, felt about this invasion. In those early days I seldom met any of them to find out, or if I did I didn't know it. For now the state of all of us was the same -- a pair of hands and an aching back -- whether we had come in the spaceships or lifeships or had been there all the time.

 

 

The main difficulty about the building situation was that the prevailing conditions didn't allow of temporary housing at all. The gales would blow tents and huts away. Light, flimsy structures weighed so little that it didn't take much of a wind to tear them away from the loose surface of Mars. When a house was built, the first essential was a deep, strong foundation. There was clay lower down, but the surface was shifting sand or fine dust.

 

 

By this time, the people who had been there longer than we had were telling us, the weather was really beginning to settle down. Though it rained every day, they pointed out that at least it was fairly clean rain.

 

 

A lot of the dust was out of the atmosphere now, though there were strange, beautiful effects at sunset and sunrise. The gales were not quite so fierce as they had been at first, and there were hardly any whirlwinds any more. Mars, after all, had few mountains, which was a factor tending toward stability; the ground and the air above it were heated pretty evenly. There were occasional calm periods. Sometimes Mars was like California in June. But only sometimes.

 

 

I soon saw the reason for the simple one-piece garment that nearly everyone wore. I saw it on my first day in the open.

 

 

Leslie and I were checking stores. Suddenly it was raining. There was no warning at all. I looked quickly around for shelter.

 

 

"You don't shelter on Mars," Leslie told me. "Not from rain. It's the wind that drives us under cover."

 

 

It was undoubtedly true that by the time we reached shelter we'd be too wet to care. I wondered why I was so wet so quickly. Then I saw why. I looked inquiringly at Leslie.

 

 

She nodded. "The rain's almost horizontal," she said. "It often is."

 

 

With only two fifths of Earth's gravity and much the same wind velocity, the rain didn't so much pour down as sweep along like the wind. Used to Earth, you felt it was raining up at you. It made raincoats ridiculous. It went down your collar, up your legs, and in a matter of seconds you were as wet as if you'd plunged into a lake.

 

 

Leslie went on working unconcernedly. I was just about to make some comment when the rain stopped almost as quickly as it had begun. It had lasted only about three minutes.

 

 

It stands to reason that a wind following a rainstorm is a wet wind. It's blowing over wet ground, drying it, picking up water of evaporation.

 

 

Well, on Mars that doesn't follow. Conditions on Mars are so different from those of Earth that you have to forget all your weather lore and start again before you can predict anything. On Mars the wind wheels so often that if there's one thing you can be reasonably certain about, it's that you'll have a dry wind following rain. That is, a dry wind sweeping in from an angle.

 

 

About sixty seconds after the last drops of rain had fallen, Leslie's legs were dry. A few minutes later her clothes were only slightly damp.

 

 

"That's why you wear that outfit?" I asked. "It's loose and it dries quickly?"

 

 

"Oh no," she said. "You'll see the reason for that in a minute." She looked at my shirt and slacks and smiled faintly.

 

 

"It could be a reason," I said. "My pants are still wet at the knees."

 

 

It was half an hour before a real wind came. I staggered when it hit me. Leslie, who knew how to brace herself, wasn't visibly perturbed.

 

 

"We take cover now," she said calmly, "if we can. If not, we lie down."

 

 

We fought our way to the pile of stores where the others were huddled. All the way my trouser legs billowed and flapped like blankets left out in a storm. Twice the wind dragged my shirt out from under my waistband. It did it in little sharp tugs, an inch at a time. Before I could get my shirt to stay put I had to tighten my belt until it was cutting me in two.

 

 

"You see why we wear a one-piece suit?" said Leslie breathlessly, as we joined the other members of 94 in the shelter of two head-high walls at right angles.

 

 

It was obvious now. The only thing to wear in a swirling wind like that was something simple, strong, and molded to the body, something that didn't catch the wind and couldn't be torn open and off. My legs were tired with the effort of moving them. My pants had acted like sails.

 

 

"Where's Betty?" said Leslie suddenly, sharply. "Look, Bill -- catch her!"

 

 

I was still pondering over the effects of a strong wind with only two fifths Earth gravity to hold things down. I turned wildly, startled, not knowing what I was looking for.

 

 

Leslie and I were strong and had plenty of power in our legs. Betty wasn't and hadn't. She was a featherweight at best; in a wind like that she was utterly helpless.

 

 

When I turned she was about twenty yards away. A second later she was less than ten. Somehow she was keeping herself upright, looking as if she was running but really being swept before the wind like a straw.

 

 

I leaped out and caught her -- and we nearly knocked ourselves senseless. It was like when I hit Morgan. Gravity seems almost nothing, but inertia is still the same as ever. If Betty had run into a wall at the speed she had been going, she could have killed herself. I was quite hard enough to knock the wind out of her.

 

 

"Thanks, Bill," she gasped. "Oh, I was scared!"

 

 

"How often have I told you," Morgan snapped, "to lie down and stay put when a wind like that starts?"

 

 

"I know, Morgan," said Betty penitently. "But I couldn't. I was -- "

 

 

"Then you're not going to last long on this unprintable world," said Morgan.

 

 

I considered slapping his head for that, but decided against it. Morgan had never sworn before. It was apparently part and parcel of his new self-assertion that he had to do everything that would shock or hurt or irritate the people around him. I had to be careful what evidences of it I noticed, or I'd be nagging at him the whole time.

 

 

Sammy was quite prepared to comment, though. "That's funny," he said in a tone of mild surprise. "I thought you came from a good home, Morgan."

 

 

Morgan pretended not to hear him.

 

 

 

 

That was a fair sample of the Martian weather. What really caused its extreme volatility was the steady rotation of the planet and the absence of large, open tracts of water, which would heat and cool fairly slowly. The red desert and the air over it were heated to at least 90° Fahrenheit, then spun into darkness at something below zero. The days on Mars would always be hot, the nights freezing. There would always be winds sweeping and swirling from the twilight zone. That was permanent.

 

 

However, in about twenty years, we were told, much of the temporary climatic upheaval would be over and Mars would begin to settle down to a less violent, more comfortable existence.

 

 

That would be fine for our children.

 

 

Crops came up rapidly in the few areas of good soil. There was enough water and plenty of heat. If these had been the only things that were needed Mars would have been choked by the grain yield, despite the wind.

 

 

But crops also needed soil, something better than the sterile dust and sand which covered most of the surface of Mars. Where good earth existed the crops blazed up like ignited kerosene -- not quite the grain we had known, for it had to adapt and be adapted to the new conditions, but still usable. There wasn't enough of this good soil, however. Half the people on Mars were kept busy on the land.

 

 

The other half were busy building. That was our job, for the most part.

 

 

Except for Morgan we had no personnel problems in 94. As I expected, Leslie's worry and dissatisfaction disappeared with her responsibility. "Now you can do the worrying, Bill," she said cheerfully, "and I'll make the sympathetic, understanding remarks. But you don't worry, do you?"

 

 

"Not more than I can help," I said. "Leads to ulcers. And who wants ulcers?"

 

 

Yes, Leslie was a simple, straight-thinking, sunny character. She wasn't capricious or moody. I suppose I'd try to cover up Leslie's faults if she had any, but really there isn't any covering up to do. Back on Earth she hadn't always shown up too well, but that was when I didn't know her and she didn't know me. As we grew into each other's ways, it became almost impossible for us to have any serious disagreement, so long as I remembered -- and I did -- to tell Leslie every so often how much I loved her.

 

 

As for Sammy, he worked hard, made only the routine complaints, and didn't seem nearly so certain now that it would have been a good idea never to have been born.

 

 

"What's come over you, Sammy?" Leslie asked him once. "I haven't heard you prophesying disaster for weeks now. Did it take all the wind out of your sails when Bill got the lifeship down safely?"

 

 

Sammy grunted. "Mark my words," he said darkly, "there'll be dirty work or catastrophe or tragedy yet. I don't know what's going to happen, but something will."

 

 

Though he spoke with his own pessimistic brand of humor, it was clear that he half meant what he said.

 

 

"The leopard," Leslie sighed, "doesn't change his spots, I see. But I think I know what's the trouble with you, Sammy. It's celibacy."

 

 

"Perhaps," Sammy agreed. "If you've got a dictionary handy, I'll tell you."

 

 

"Get yourself a girl, Sammy," Leslie advised.

 

 

Sammy's brow clouded for a moment, and I knew he was thinking of a girl who must be dead now -- but a girl he'd lost long before that. However, he rallied at once.

 

 

"You leaving Bill?" he asked. "I was wondering when you'd realize what a mistake you'd made. I'll think it over, Leslie. If I decide to accept your offer, I'll let you know."

 

 

Leslie merely grinned.

 

 

The Stowes, Caroline and John, were very self-sufficient. They did all that had to be done without complaining. They were always ready to help anyone who needed help, but they never asked for help themselves. Caroline, like Leslie and Betty, was pregnant, but unlike them, she didn't like anyone to mention it. Though she wasn't ashamed of the fact, it wasn't the sort of thing one talked about.

 

 

"She's still Miss Wallace, really," Leslie commented, without malice. "One of those women who can be a respectable matron and an old maid at the same time."

 

 

I grinned, because the remark was so just. Nevertheless I couldn't help saying: "Don't be rude about Caroline, Leslie. Did I ever tell you she came to me in Simsville and begged me to take you to Mars?"

 

 

"Did she?" asked Leslie, astonished. "I always thought she disapproved of me. Incidentally, did that influence you?"

 

 

"No," I said. "You and she were already on my list at the time."

 

 

Leslie started to say something, then stopped. That was something we still didn't talk about.

 

 

Jim Stowe was fourteen now, and with his first birthday on Mars he felt he was a man. He continued to be my personal assistant. His quick intelligence was soon known at all the stores and depots. I saw no reason to revise my idea that one day Jim would be a big man in the Martian settlement.

 

 

Harry Phillips was the same as ever, kindly and slow and phlegmatic. He couldn't smoke a pipe or drink a reflective half pint of beer any more, but that difficulty, which one might have thought would have taken half the savor out of life for him, didn't seem to bother him at all.

 

 

"Guess if I had a smoke now I'd wonder what I ever saw in tobacco," he said philosophically. "And I don't think I'd like the taste of beer any more. Been telling myself that, anyway. I've got more than halfway to believing it, too."

 

 

I tried several times to get Harry transferred to an agricultural unit, where he would be much more useful. However, the work party system was working so well that nobody wanted to break up any of the units if it could be helped. And Harry said that in the circumstances he'd just as soon stay with us.

 

 

I didn't see much of little Bessie these days. Young children were given jobs at the research station, making things, sorting things, running errands. It would be a long time yet before there was school again for the children. When there was, Leslie and Caroline would be back at their old jobs, teaching.

 

 

Anyway, I knew Bessie would be happy. She always was.

 

 

That left only Betty and Morgan.

 

 

Betty put up a brave show. She always pretended she was perfectly happy and that Morgan and she got on very much as Leslie and I did, or the Stowes. We pretended to believe it.

 

 

Morgan continued to do only what he had to, sketchily, resentfully, without pride or interest in it. He couldn't be trusted to do anything on his own.

 

 

"Listen, Morgan," I said to him on one occasion. "Nobody's trying to make you do more than your fair share. I know you don't want to do this -- think any of us do? Why we're doing it is so that we can all be comfortable again. We -- "

 

 

"Shut up," said Morgan harshly. "I may have to work, but I don't have to listen to you."

 

 

"What's gone sour in you, Morgan?" I asked curiously. "Tell me -- was I right to pick you for my lifeship crew, or did I make a mistake? Were you a cheap chiseler back on Earth too?"

 

 

That got under his skin. He flushed a dull red down to his shoulders. I was glad to see that, not because I wanted to get under his skin but because a man isn't hopeless so long as you can.

 

 

He didn't answer.

 

 

"What's eating you, Morgan?" I persisted.

 

 

"I'll tell you," he said suddenly, passionately. "I've heard you talk about human rights, but you still act the little dictator. You always have. We had to lick your boots back in Simsville -- you had all the power, with nobody to check on you. On the lifeship you kept on being the big boss. Well, now I'm good and sick of you. I'm sick of being pushed around and worked like a slave and never being left alone. I didn't come here to be a slave. Who are you to talk about rights?"

 

 

I didn't remember talking about human rights, but I might have, and this was obviously one of Morgan's sore spots. I could tell that from the way he suddenly dragged the question of human rights from nowhere and got angry about it.

 

 

"Sometimes human rights have to be suspended for a bit," I said coolly. "Particularly such human rights as sitting on your backside and letting other people do the work."

 

 

Betty came along then. I tried to continue the discussion, but Morgan so obviously resented my bawling him out in front of Betty, as he considered it, that I shrugged and left them.

 

 

There was something in what he said about my being a dictator. I had to be. When things are grim, people have to be put in charge, people who say "Jump" and make sure everyone jumps without reporting in triplicate on their methods to some central bureau of justice.

 

 

The truth, I suspected, was not that Morgan was worried over the principle of the thing, as Sammy, say, might have been. Morgan didn't really mind someone giving the orders and cracking the whip to make sure they were immediately obeyed.

 

 

Morgan wanted to crack the whip himself.

 

 

I referred to the only law there was higher than the lieutenants -- the council Sammy had told me about when I was still in the hospital. His description hadn't been unfair. Winant was governed by the original colony committee, plus the leaders who had emerged from the complements of the big spaceships, plus a few of the lieutenants themselves -- never very many, not because we didn't all have the right to sit in on council meetings, but because there were seldom very many of us free to do so.

 

 

The council's advice on Morgan was merely: "Beat him. Starve him." It wasn't inhuman advice, it was inevitable. We were still fighting for our lives on Mars. Anyone among us who didn't pull his weight had to be kicked in the teeth until he did.

 

 

I tried docking Morgan's rations, without effect. Betty, I knew, was sharing hers with him, and I could hardly punish her too. I tried to make her see that Morgan must be brought into line, but as Leslie said: "That argument wouldn't have any effect on me, Bill, so why should it sway Betty?"

 

 

Sammy was surprised I didn't try the other suggestion. "I always thought you were a hard nut, Bill," he said. "But now when Morgan needs a swift kick in the pants, you won't give it to him."

 

 

I shrugged. "I'd beat anyone else, including you," I told him, "but I don't think it'll do Morgan the slightest good. He'll only resent it, hate me, hate everybody, and try to get even."

 

 

"He's doing that anyway," said Sammy, "so I don't see what harm it can do."

 

 

Morgan had taken up with an old acquaintance of mine, Alec Ritchie, who had just been discharged from the hospital with his leg in a cast. I remembered Ritchie showing interest in anyone who made a nuisance of himself.

 

 

"I never liked Ritchie," Sammy told Leslie and me. "Now that he and Morgan are hanging around together I know I was right."

 

 

I grinned. "Talk about bias," I said.

 

 

"No, I'm talking about Ritchie. Another thing. I don't like tbe way Morgan's been looking at Aileen Ritchie."

 

 

"Why, are you casting covetous eyes on Aileen?" demanded Leslie, interested.

 

 

"Just the words I was looking for," said Sammy. "Not that I am. Morgan is."

 

 

"Is what?"

 

 

"Casting covetous eyes on Aileen Ritchie."

 

 

"But he can't . . ." Suddenly Leslie realized that he could. Marriage didn't really count any more. Strictly, Betty and Morgan weren't married anyway. Neither were Leslie and I.

 

 

"Oh, Lord," I said, seeing more trouble.

 

 

"That would be the end of Betty," said Leslie vehemently. "She'd kill herself. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. The poor kid still worships the ground Morgan treads on."

 

 

"I know," said Sammy. "That's why I don't like it."

 

 

"But Aileen wouldn't be such a fool . . ."

 

 

"Let's hope not," I said. "But frankly I don't see any happiness for Betty until Morgan does leave her. She certainly isn't happy with him."

 

 

We were uncomfortably silent after that. There was nothing anyone could do about Betty. Hers was one of those purely private tragedies which no one else can share or understand, and which most people prefer not to see.

 

 

I wondered what Ritchie could possibly want with Morgan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4

 

 

Occasionally as the weeks passed I remembered Ritchie's words and wondered if there was anyone among the fugitives from Earth who was just waiting for a chance to step in and take over Winant. It was possible. It made too much sense.

 

 

The big, clumsy, badly constituted council was all that was needed while everyone was still working fourteen hours a day. Keep people busy enough and they don't need a government. They don't need much law either.

 

 

Eventually, however, the situation would change. And what was being done to prepare for the time when we were no longer concerned merely with staying alive?

 

 

Nothing.

 

 

Nothing, at any rate, officially. Ritchie, of course, would be preparing. I didn't know anything of what his schemes would be, but I knew there would be schemes, all with the same object -- the greatest possible power, success, comfort, safety, and freedom for Alec Ritchie.

 

 

And if there was one Alec Ritchie, there must be more. Possibly Ritchie himself would be a complete failure, his schemes collapsing about him in ruin. But some other smart Alec, some bigger and shrewder Ritchie, might even now be planning a future the council didn't dream of, yet a future that could swallow ours. Ritchie had put it plainly and neatly, and possibly even truly. I'd seen something of the sort happen on Earth, often.

 

 

The slow, patient, stupid peasant spends forty years saving enough to keep him in comfort for the rest of his life. And the smart, smooth, practiced con man spends forty minutes taking it away from him.

 

 

The small child slowly gathers a fine collection of shells. The bigger child acquires the whole collection by the simple method of taking it from him.

 

 

It's not as easy to take over a community like Winant as it is to take shells from a small child. Of course not. But does the peasant expect to lose his money? Does the child expect to lose his shells? No, and we were putting ourselves in line by not expecting anyone to become a dictator in Winant.

 

 

At that point I usually laughed at myself and thought of some more pleasant aspect of the future, like whether we were going to have a son or a daughter, and what we were going to call him or her.

 

 

 

 

There was no money in the settlement, and a lot of people, myself included, thought we could get on very nicely without it. When the so-called labor units came in, however, we lieutenants had to take notice of them. There were different kinds of labor units at first. The root idea behind them all was that people who wanted something made promises of one kind or another, the prospective seller insisted on having them in writing, and the buyer drew up a contract and signed it.

 

 

And before we knew it we had money again.

 

 

The principal thing that could replace money, of course, was service. People would promise, in return for something, that when they were able they would do some job or other. Sometimes the promise was to replace the article at some future date with another of slightly better quality. These promises were written down and became, inevitably, negotiable.

 

 

When we realized we had to do something about this innovation we were already too late to catch the first profiteers of the new settlement. Some cunning characters had been quick to realize the possibility of gain in this system. With their uncanny instinct for profit they had sold all they had to sell, plus a lot that they didn't, exchanged the tokens they gained for others, gave out promises of their own, shuffled their gains about with the magical sleight of hand of the brilliant businessman, sold them to the right people at the right moment, bought back their own promises, and generally kept things on the move, with each move meaning a little more in their own pockets. It was they who flooded the market with bad currency -- promises that could never be fulfilled, made by people who would promise anything -- while the real, hard cash, the tokens of the people who kept their word, was in their pockets.

 

 

We saw we couldn't stop this practice, we could only check it, standardize and administer it. We'd have liked to cancel all previous transactions, but we couldn't.

 

 

Lieutenants became bankers along with all the other things they had to do. Came the one-labor unit, representing certain stated service, the five-labor unit and the ten. We forbade anything above the ten, at first. Labor unit became labit, then laby. We had abandoned dollars, francs, pounds, marks, pesos, lire, rupees, kronen, rubles, and acquired, to replace them all, the laby. Every laby had to represent a genuine promise of service, and was countersigned by a lieutenant. It wasn't long before we were using watermarked paper, and money was back.

 

 

Close on the heels of this came another new factor connected with it.

 

 

Morgan didn't appear to work one day on the building we were erecting, but someone, a Czechoslovakian who spoke very little English, came in his place. On investigating I found he'd been paid to do Morgan's job. He was satisfied; he was a tough, honest fellow who could do two men's work. One man's work he had to do for nothing, but he could get money for the extra work he did. He must somehow have arranged his freedom from his own party, by doing three days' work in two, perhaps.

 

 

I couldn't do a thing. I didn't know where Morgan got the money -- he wasn't the kind of smart businessman who could take advantage of any opportunity to line his pockets -- but I could guess. Alec Ritchie, I was certain, was the kind of smart businessman who could take advantage of any opportunity to line his pockets, and had.

 

 

That day was notable for more than the reintroduction of paid service.

 

 

Group 94 was being transferred to the excavations, now well advanced, and three of us went on ahead to see what we were going to have to do, while the rest, minus Morgan and plus his hired hand, carried on at the old job under Sammy. The three who went were Leslie, Betty, and I.

 

 

Betty seemed unnaturally gay. She wasn't a talker as a rule, but on this occasion she talked so much that Leslie and I could hardly get a word in. I caught Leslie's inquiring glance once or twice, and wondered whether to ask Betty bluntly what the matter was. It would be something to do with Morgan, of course.

 

 

However, Leslie suddenly asked, when Betty stopped talking for a moment: "Are you feeling all right, Betty?"

 

 

Leslie must have seen things I missed. I hadn't noticed anything physically wrong with Betty. But I knew Leslie was on the right track when Betty said swiftly:

 

 

"No, it's just the air pressure. I'm all right."

 

 

Human beings always have to have a handy excuse for everything, and on Mars the reduced air pressure was blamed for a lot of things it didn't do. Mars really had a very thick envelope of air, much thicker than anyone had thought before the first ship reached Mars. The only thing Mars couldn't do in this respect was make the air weigh so much. Mars had a surprisingly high air pressure, but it was well short of what we were used to.

 

 

Knowing this, people used it as an excuse for being tired, or stiff, or having a headache, or not wanting to work, or whatever it was they wanted an excuse for. But in actual fact it had scarcely any perceptible effect on us at all, beyond reducing the boiling point of water so that what we called hot water ceased to exist except in a laboratory. Or rather, it had the same effect on all of us. We adapted to it, as we adapted to the reduced gravity. We couldn't help it.

 

 

So when Betty made the new but already old excuse I knew she was hiding something.

 

 

"You don't feel sick, do you?" I asked.

 

 

"No, it's nothing. Forget it."

 

 

Obviously it made her feel worse when we talked about it. I noticed now that she was a little unsteady on her feet. Since she wanted to talk about something else, anything else, we let her do it.

 

 

About two minutes later she reeled in a sudden gust of wind. I caught her, quite gently, and steadied her. But at my touch she stiffened and collapsed in a faint.

 

 

"Leslie," I said, "have a look at her. She fainted when I put my arm around her."

 

 

I paced about as Leslie bent over the girl. I was hoping fervently that this was nothing over which I would have to take action. I was quite sure that what I'd told Sammy about Morgan was right. The only hope for Morgan was that bit by bit he could be made to realize clearly and plainly what he was doing and see just how that conduct fitted, or didn't fit, in the fabric of the fight for existence of a tiny remnant of all the peoples of Earth.

 

 

I heard Leslie catch her breath sharply and knew that ignoring this wasn't going to be possible.

 

 

"I think you'd better have a look at her, Bill," said Leslie. There was fury in her voice which I had never heard before.

 

 

There was no sign of Betty's pregnancy yet. Her belly was thin and flat, and it was one big angry bruise. There was hardly a square inch of clear, undamaged skin below the waist. It was no surprise at all that Betty had fainted at a touch. How she could have come by those injuries I found it difficult to guess. I didn't think merely pounding her with a fist could have done that.

 

 

Leslie was too angry to speak. I wasn't angry, after one wild surge of rage, just tired, disappointed, and sorry. The man who could do that could do anything. He could easily have killed Betty; the fact that she was able to walk about and pretend nothing had happened to her wasn't his fault.

 

 

"Now I'll have to beat him," I said wearily, "and if we don't watch them day and night he'll take it out of Betty. Until finally he kills her. Then we can shoot or hang Morgan, and the air around here will be a little cleaner."

 

 

"He's not going to kill Betty!" exclaimed Leslie fiercely.

 

 

"I don't see how we can stop him," I said. "She won't leave him, even now. We can't execute him, or put him in prison, or extradite him. All we can do is wait till he kills someone, and then by ordinary, common-sense law we can execute him to stop him from killing anyone else."

 

 

I went on in weary bitterness: "God, to think I did this. I could have done better by picking the first lounger I saw in the street -- "

 

 

Betty stirred and opened her eyes. She looked up at us, searched our faces, and then suddenly felt the breeze on her skin. With a convulsive movement she sat up, wincing, and grabbed at her suit.

 

 

"Let me do it," said Leslie. She eased the garment carefully over the bruised flesh.

 

 

"I fell," said Betty quickly. "It was during the gale yesterday -- "

 

 

"Hell, you're not going to cover up for Morgan now, are you?" I demanded.

 

 

"It wasn't Morgan. It was -- "

 

 

"How did he do it?" I asked.

 

 

She capitulated. She burst into tears, crying as I had never seen a woman cry before. She didn't weep with passion, but with grief and misery and hopelessness.

 

 

Through her tears, in choked phrases, she told us what had happened.