Morgan had taken her far out in the desert the night before, just after sunset. He had told her she mustn't have her baby. If she did, he would kill it. She had been crying, begging, screaming, but he slapped her face until she was quiet. He asked her if she knew how to arrange a miscarriage. She didn't. It hadn't occurred to her that any woman had ever tried to arrange a miscarriage. Even slapping her face couldn't stop her crying and pleading again.

 

 

He threw her down and started hitting her with a round stone, sitting on her chest to hold her down. Betty didn't know how long that went on. She thought she had been unconscious for a while, but when she revived he was still beating her with the stone. Finally he said, "That ought to do it," threw the stone away, and let her get up, when she could.

 

 

"But why, Betty?" said Leslie wonderingly. "Did he say why?"

 

 

Through a fresh flood of tears Betty said: "He said he's going to have Aileen Ritchie. He said he didn't want me and a kid I could say was his always hanging around his neck. Now I'll lose my baby and -- "

 

 

"You won't," I said. "Not if you keep away from Morgan in future and don't give him another chance."

 

 

The tears stopped abruptly. "I won't lose my baby?" Betty asked incredulously.

 

 

"I don't think so. Morgan doesn't know a thing about it, which is just as well. Keep clear of him and you'll have your baby all right."

 

 

"But I can't keep clear of him! I love him."

 

 

I knew that. I'd thought about it already. I sighed. "Make sure he never has a chance to do anything like that again, then."

 

 

Betty looked almost happy. "Then we can forget all about it?" she asked hopefully.

 

 

Leslie's eyes met mine. "No, Betty," I said sadly. "We can never forget all about it. A man can beat his wife or throw her about a bit and it's nobody's business but their own. But when a man does what Morgan's done to you, it's everybody's business."

 

 

"Please," Betty pleaded. "Let Morgan and me -- "

 

 

"No, Betty," I repeated patiently. "Do you want Morgan to kill you and your baby?"

 

 

When Morgan appeared that evening I waited until his paid deputy had gone, and then drew the whole group together in the husk of the building we were helping to erect. I wasn't dramatic. I told them simply what was going to happen and precisely why. Morgan went ashen and tried to run for it, but Sammy was right behind him.

 

 

I made Betty show them all what Morgan had done to her. I had to do that, because Betty was quite capable of denying, at some future date, that Morgan had ever assaulted her at all. At the gasps and cries and murmurs of anger that were loosed I surveyed Morgan to see if there was any sign of regret. There was none -- only fear of what was going to happen to him.

 

 

Well, fear it would have to be, then. He would have to leave Betty alone because he was afraid to touch her, if that was the only restraint that could be put on him.

 

 

I didn't ask them to stay while I whipped Morgan. The only purpose in public punishment is to deter others, and the others didn't need deterring. Sammy stayed, that was all. I got Leslie to take Betty away.

 

 

Sammy had said he always thought I was a hard nut. When I whipped Morgan I discovered quite definitely that I wasn't. Each time he screamed, and he screamed often, the sound crawled in my guts. I couldn't see what pleasure anyone could get in hurting other people. It made me sick.

 

 

I had to keep reminding myself, as I'd told Morgan again and again, that this wasn't punishment for the past, it was warning for the future. Any time he wanted to act like a beast in the future, I told him over and over again, he would have to decide whether it was worth being beaten half to death afterward.

 

 

When it was over Morgan was moaning and crying together. I didn't blame him for that. I'd given him just about all he could take.

 

 

And once again I tried to drive the lesson home. "The next time, Morgan," I said quietly, "it will be worse.

 

 

Sammy and I left him. I wouldn't meet Sammy's eyes. I still felt it had had to be done, but I wasn't proud of having done it.

 

 

"If you'd carried on just a little longer," Sammy said, "you might have left him feeling so low that he'd have killed himself."

 

 

I stared at him in surprise.

 

 

"It would he much better that way," said Sammy moodily. "Morgan's never going to be any use to anybody."

 

 

I thought of that as an epitaph, and shuddered.

 

 

MORGAN SMITH He was never any use to anybody.

 

 

 

 

For once, all the lieutenants were called together to vote on some of the big questions. It was time we had a properly constituted government. There was no question of that.

 

 

It was some meeting. There were nearly two thousand present, in the biggest hall at the research station and in dozens of other rooms around it, hearing what was going on by a big public-address link-up. Every room had to have a sort of chairman to keep his group in order and not have the P.A. system choked with babble.

 

 

One of the things we did was vote ourselves out of power, as lieutenants. Some of us were pretty fed up with the job anyway. We had a little power and a lot of extra work. Others knew that though they might have been the right men to command lifeships, they weren't the right men for the job they had now. We agreed that the groups of eleven, the lifeship crews, should stay units for the moment, but each should elect its own leader. Representatives would also be returned in the same way by the big ships' complements and by the members of the original colony.

 

 

There was a long discussion about whether it was a good thing to keep representation in three groups like that. Somebody said we should have government for the whole population, not representatives who stood for the special interests of different groups. But it was agreed in the end that there were no special interests. It no longer mattered whether people had been on Mars all along or had come in the big ships or in the lifeships.

 

 

We were building a new council from scratch, at last, instead of trying to patch up some existing organization. Nobody imagined it would be perfect. It would be better, that was all. The next council, we hoped, would be better still.

 

 

We might have gone back and held our elections right away, so that it would be the new council who settled the other problems we had before us. However, on another vote we decided that, rather than throw the new council in at the deep end, we'd give them soinething to work on and amend. We'd make the decisions and go on giving the orders for a week longer before throwing the council open to everybody. We had some experience of command, after all. The new members would have to learn how to apply it.

 

 

We agreed that the laby system was out of our control. We could avoid what might be called inflation and deflation, that was all.

 

 

Marriage was abolished temporarily. There had been a lot of trouble over that, people wanting someone to marry them, people wanting someone to give them divorces, people living together without marriage, people formally married sneering at people informally married and saying they were living in sin. It seemed that the best answer was not to elevate formal marriage and give away or refuse divorces, but at one bold stroke to destroy immorality and leave sex relations to -- of all things -- common sense.

 

 

Then there was another long discussion on the problem of language, race, and nation.

 

 

Our twenty thousand plus was composed of white men, black men, brown men, and yellow men, speaking English, French, Chinese, Russian, German, Italian, Arabic, Swahili, and scores of other languages. Agreement on English as the standard language was surprisingly easy, but agreement that the other languages should die was as difficult as anyone would have expected.

 

 

You couldn't blame the Spaniards, with their Cervantes, the Greeks, with their glorious classical age, the Germans, with their Goethe and Sculler and Heine, for objecting. I don't have to put their case, it's so obvious. However, the case for English as not merely the standard language but the only language was pretty good too. Without language barriers we'd have a much better chance of real unity than Earth ever had.

 

 

We didn't settle that question. It was clear we couldn't, just then. But it would probably work itself out. If people had to speak English to be understood, the other languages would die, year by year, generation by generation.

 

 

Again, it was with surprisingly little trouble that we agreed that mating between any female and any male should be permitted, outside the blood relationships which would exist again in the next generation. Some of the Americans, Germans, and Africans were violently against miscegenation. The French didn't give a damn. The South Africans and Australians wouldn't even talk about it. The English thought it would be a good thing, in theory.

 

 

And it was in theory that we agreed on it. We couldn't solve a problem like that merely by voting on it. But the vote meant that we hoped the Martian colony would one day comprise one people and one race, speaking one language.

 

 

It all sounded very fine.

 

 

We decided to go on as at present with soil preparation and building as the two over-all priorities. We formed a banking unit to supervise laby transactions, a medical unit to check on a few new (fortunately mild) illnesses that were appearing in the new conditions, and an exploration unit to survey Mars, chiefly for rich soil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5

 

 

Came the day of the great storm, which modified most of our plans.

 

 

It started like any ordinary gale. I was out alone, about half a mile from the research station, looking for another vein of the red rock we'd been using. When the wind started I dropped flat. Usually the winds didn't last. You waited for a calm period and then made for shelter.

 

 

The first indication I had that this wasn't an ordinary wind was when I was lifted like a feather, whirled in the air, swept along about twenty yards, and then dashed to the ground. I was lucky in being dropped on one of the thickest patches of lichen. I was only jarred from tip to toe. No bones were broken.

 

 

Presently I wasn't so sure that I had been lucky in my landing ground. The lichen offered no purchase at all. At least the rocks were something to hang onto. Another gust came and I was lifted again. I spun crazily, touched the ground with one foot, somersaulted, and bounced off the lichen again. I was bowled along, half lifted, half rolled, for fully a hundred yards. This time, however, I came to a stop against a spur of rock to which I clung grimly.

 

 

The gale, insofar as it had direction, was coming from Winant. Fairly safe for the moment, I looked to see what was being blown from there -- and there was plenty. There were sheets of metal, tarpaulins, doors, bits of masonry -- and people, little black, struggling things whirling like confetti from an electric fan. I was thankful that my group was working in the vast hole in front of the station. They would be safe, if anyone was.

 

 

A naked body shot past me, twenty feet in the air. I knew the man was dead, because his head was flapping from side to side like a flag. He still wore his shoes, but his suit had been torn off him. Fifty yards to the right a woman was swept past. She was still alive -- she saw me and made a wild gesture of appeal. I could do nothing, of course. The only hope anyone had in a storm like that was to find an anchor, as I had done, and stay put.

 

 

Just for an instant, and then it was gone, I heard a distant crash. I scanned Winant, my eyes stung by the wind, streaming with tears. The gale had actually lifted a lifeship and cast it down again across half a dozen others. As I looked, another lifeship was torn loose and spun crazily along across the plain.

 

 

I wondered if this was going to be the end of it all for Winant and for the people from Earth. My arms were aching; an extra-strong gust and I should be swept away again. No one else could be in much better state except the people in the pit, and those in the station itself. Even if the storm stopped at once, the toll must be enormous.

 

 

The fate of the community was going to depend very largely on the number of people who happened to be in the pit and the station at the time. I had no up-to-date information on who was working where. If there had been only a thousand actually at the station and fifty in the pit -- which was possible -- Winant might drop in one day below the critical level for survival.

 

 

As if to show that even the people in the pit weren't safe, the wind suddenly threw up a vast black cloud of dust which completely obscured Winant. Hundreds of tons of dust and sand must be showering into the excavations.

 

 

I was trying not to see the things and people flying past me. Winant I could do nothing about, but it seemed that I should at least try to help the poor wretches who were blown past, helpless, most of them dead but some all too obviously still alive. I felt guilty because I was safe.

 

 

In a black shower, what seemed like half Winant hurled across the plain two hundred yards away. There were cattle, helpless in the gale; men and women, clawing wildly at the air, desperately seeking something to hang on to; loose stones, clothing, and thousands of small objects I couldn't identify. As I watched, unable to look away, the whole dark cloud was dashed to the ground, disintegrated like a bombed house, and swept on in a dozen streamlets.

 

 

I saw one man grasp a rock as I had done. He took a firm hold with both arms. Just for an instant relief must have flooded him. Then a big, dark object that might have been part of a wall struck him in the back with such force that it broke the rock through him, and all together they swept on before the gale -- masonry, broken rock, and indeterminate pieces of animal tissue.

 

 

A youth whose mind must have given way flew past gracefully, flapping his arms like a bird's wings and laughing in ecstasy. I watched him into the distance, still beating his arms as if he had discovered the secret of flight.

 

 

Far out to my right I saw a speck high in the air, higher than any debris I had seen so far. It had thin, waving tendrils that must be arms and legs. Abruptly it fell as the wind, which had supported it, died for an instant. I saw it plummet down almost to the ground. Then it was swept away again, only a few feet above the plain, as if the gale was playing with it.

 

 

When I looked back toward Winant I saw three people quite near me rolling in line across the plain, like a grotesque act in an acrobatic show. I started when I saw the middle one clearly for an instant. It was Aileen Ritchie. Dust blinded me for long seconds. When I could see again, two of the three were gone, but Aileen was clinging to the same spur of rock as I was, forty yards away. As I saw her, she nearly lost her grip. She seemed to be hurt, which was no surprise at all.

 

 

I had been able to ignore the people I didn't know, treating them as puppets in the wild, mad scene, no more aidable than the shadows on a movie screen. But crazy though it might be to move from my comparatively safe anchorage, I had to try to help someone I did know. I started clawing my way along the ridge to Aileen.

 

 

In two places the ridge was broken, the wind whistling through the gap. I'd have stopped at the first if it hadn't been obvious that, left unaided, Aileen was going to be swept away in a few minutes. I don't know quite how I did cross the two gaps. I certainly didn't walk, and I didn't crawl. I must simply have thrown myself across and grabbed the rock.

 

 

Just before I reached Aileen the thought crossed my mind that if it had been Morgan, not she, a problem would have been solved. I could have stayed put and watched him fight his battle with the storm and lose it. But I couldn't be sure that I'd have let even Morgan die. In a turmoil like that, a man might be insane enough to risk his life to save an enemy, simply to try to cheat the gale and because they were both human beings.

 

 

I reached Aileen and grasped her firmly. I had seen her often and nodded to her, but I had never actually spoken to her except for those few words in the hospital.

 

 

"Thanks," she gasped. "I couldn't have lasted much longer."

 

 

"Let's get five yards back," I said. I could feel the words being ripped out of my mouth and swept away across the desert. "There's a safe place for both of us."

 

 

We made it with a struggle. The ridge was only about four feet high, but at that point there was a crack into which we could wedge ourselves. We jammed our legs in together and stood breast to breast like dancers in a ballroom. Aileen could lean back a little against the rock, and did. She seemed rather embarrassed. The situation was too serious for me to be embarrassed at all.

 

 

"Where are you hurt?" I asked.

 

 

"Arm, side, and head, I think," she said.

 

 

I checked her injuries, but they seemed minor -- minor, at any rate, while the world was being blown apart at the seams. She wasn't going to be able to use her left arm for a day or two, her fair hair was clotted with blood, and she had a six-inch gash in her side -- but what was that when hundreds of people were being dashed to pulp all about us?

 

 

"What happened to the rest of 92?" I asked.

 

 

"They're all right. They got under cover. I didn't quite make it. How about your group, Lieutenant Easson?"

 

 

"In the pit," I said. I grinned wryly. "In the circumstances, Aileen, I think you might call me Bill."

 

 

She smiled. "I suppose so, Bill. How long do you think this'll last?"

 

 

"Since nothing quite like this has happened before, any guesses I might make would be worthless. I'd have thought it would have been over long since."

 

 

Instead of its being over, we suddenly found ourselves enveloped in the dust cloud of all time. We shut our eyes, not only to protect them, but because we couldn't see anything anyway.

 

 

The flying dust and sand pierced our skin like thousands of tiny needles. I felt a sharp twinge in my neck as a cloud of sand peppered it like buckshot. I put my hand to the back of my neck and it came away sticky with blood.

 

 

Then just as the worst of the dust storm seemed to be over and I opened my eyes cautiously, rain swept over us, hammering our skin, beating on our temples.

 

 

Aileen's voice came to me from a long way off. "You don't mind if I . . . ?" She straightened against me and put her arms around me.

 

 

I clutched her tightly. "I don't mind at all," I said.

 

 

In a few seconds we were awash, water running down from our shoulders to our ankles. I felt a stream from Aileen's knee transferring itself to my calf. Gradually the gray dust that had covered us was washed away, like chalk marks on a wall when a shower starts.

 

 

Aileen was crying. Her tears seemed to surprise her more than they surprised me. She made a desperate effort to stop, and told me fiercely: "I don't know why I'm doing this. It's not because I'm hurt."

 

 

I understood, because I felt like crying too. I've heard of men doing it in storms on Earth, when their utter impotence is brought home to them. Here there was all there had been in storms on Earth, plus the insecurity and helplessness of being so lightly secured to the surface of the world by the weak, tenuous gravity.

 

 

The rain lasted only two minutes or so. Then the character of the wind changed. It began to come in sudden, incredibly fierce gusts, followed by comparative calm.

 

 

Aileen mastered herself at last. She cast a quick, ashamed glance up at my face, still clinging to me.

 

 

"Think nothing of it," I said. "It's enough to make anyone cry."

 

 

"I feel such a baby," she said vehemently. "So weak and useless -- if you weren't here I wouldn't last five minutes in this."

 

 

Out of the fog of dust which was still streaming overhead a huge, gleaming shape dropped abruptly. We couldn't move. We waited to be crushed to death, hugging each other convulsively.

 

 

However, its size had deceived us. It crashed down fully fifty yards away, broke in two, and was swept away on the wings of the wind again. We didn't hear the sound of the crash at all. It was entirely dissipated by the storm.

 

 

"What was that?" asked Aileen.

 

 

"Lifeship," I said. I was thinking of how that ship had come safely from Earth to Mars, and had then been destroyed by a mere wind.

 

 

Suddenly the wind died. We were left feeling rather foolish, clinging tightly to each other as protection against a storm that no longer existed.

 

 

"Can that be the end?" Aileen whispered. It seemed natural to whisper in the sudden silence.

 

 

"Probably, but while we're here we're safe. Let's wait until the dust settles a little. I'll have a look at that gash of yours, now that there's water to -- "

 

 

"I'd rather you didn't," said Aileen quickly.

 

 

"As you like," I said equably.

 

 

"I'm sorry, I only meant -- "

 

 

I grinned. "I know." I prised myself out and sat on the rock. Aileen pulled herself up beside me.

 

 

"Bill, I should have known better," she said humbly. " Please see if you can do anything about that gash."

 

 

"Stop apologizing, Aileen." I smiled. "And don't make an issue of it. I don't think you thought I thought whatever it was. Come on, I'll carry you to the hospital."

 

 

"I can walk."

 

 

"Perhaps, but it isn't necessary. You realize that if I carry you I'm still only moving point six nine of what I used to have to tote around all the time on Earth?"

 

 

She chuckled. "That's so. All right, go ahead."

 

 

We lost our lightness of manner before we'd gone far. The ground was strewn with debris, human and otherwise. And a glance showed that the crops some of us had labored over were all destroyed.

 

 

"We can't say Mars gave us no warning," I said heavily. "There were light winds and strong winds. We should have been ready for an occasional much stronger wind."

 

 

I left her at the research station and went to the pit, refusing to look about me and see how much of our work was ruined.

 

 

 

 

The great storm killed 2590 people and injured 6000 more. It put us back where we had started as far as food was concerned, and killed so many cattle that the remainder would have to be watched and tended and bred very carefully if the species were not to die out. It showed that only buildings as strong as the research station itself were of any use on the surface of Mars. It put an end once and for all to all grumbles and complaints about working on permanent buildings. It demonstrated clearly to anyone and everyone how shaky our foothold on Mars still was, and how risky it was to relax until we had made it a lot more secure. It undermined the new laby system, since so many contracts which had been perfectly good the day before were now worthless.

 

 

In many ways the results of the gale were good. But no one would have wanted these things at such a cost. Besides, in one or two not so immediately obvious ways the results of the storm were not good.

 

 

One big change in plan was inevitable. Before this the general construction plan had been to construct fair-sized buildings around the research station and use the pit, the cave homes, more or less for temporary housing. The ground-level building was the important thing and the below-ground-level work stopgap and experimental.

 

 

After the storm the plan was reversed. Flats carved in solid rock, reinforced by concrete and steel, and below ground level, were obviously much safer than buildings on the surface which, as had just been demonstrated, were very vulnerable while they were in course of construction. We would make a huge square a hundred feet deep, and build on only two sides. Later we could make it even bigger, and finally we should have a warm, sheltered garden all over the floor of the square, with comfortable, solid flats all around.

 

 

True, at first the flats would be makeshift. But that way we could develop in safety. By building on the surface we should always be at the mercy of a great storm like that first one.

 

 

Group 94 came through the storm unharmed. Once I knew that, I could help to assess the damage it had done with more equanimity.

 

 

Aileen wasn't seriously hurt. She was at the hospital only a few minutes. There were too many people more seriously hurt for the hospital staff to pay much attention to mere gashes and lumps on the head.

 

 

She came and tried to thank me for saving her life. Leslie interrupted her. "He enjoyed it, Aileen," she said. "Now he'll save your life any time he gets a chance, and kiss you again."

 

 

"He didn't kiss me!" Aileen protested.

 

 

"Why not?" Leslie asked me, puzzled.

 

 

"I don't like blondes," I told her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

6

 

 

When the first informal election was held, I was voted PL. The word "lieutenant" had never been a very good description -- we had been called lieutenants merely to give us some sort of pseudo-military authority over the people back on Earth whom we were taking, or not taking, to Mars. We now became known as party leaders. But since that phrase had political connotations we didn't like, the initials were generally used.

 

 

There was no opposition to my election as PL, not even from Morgan. Morgan had been quieter, rather to my surprise, since I whipped him. He never did anything to suggest that he regretted what he had done to Betty; in fact, there was all too little doubt that he was one of those compulsive sadists who could no more keep his hands off his girl than an addict could stop taking drugs. He and Betty still fought like wildcats, and of course Betty invariably came off worst. But there was never anything for which I could whip Morgan again. He always stopped short of doing her any real harm.

 

 

She would have a bruise on her face, and say it was nothing. Or there would be blue marks on her thin wrists. Once when she turned up with her arm and shoulder bandaged, I was going to go for Morgan again, whatever Betty said. But it transpired that this time he really had had nothing to do with it. She had been dashed against a wall by the winds.

 

 

The suspension of marriage didn't do their relations any good. Morgan didn't say outright that he was finished with Betty, but he made it clear that he didn't mind whether she stayed with him or not. Betty, poor kid, still loved the man.

 

 

I had guessed for some time that Ritchie was one of the leading profiteers, and that Morgan was tied up with him in some way. After the storm there was no pretense at all. Ritchie had done very well out of the storm, and didn't mind admitting it.

 

 

With so many people dying, the whole laby system had taken a knock, since a lot of the contracts in circulation were suddenly valueless. Ritchie apparently followed out the time-hallowed process of forcing the market as low as it would go, buying all he could and then letting the market rise again. I didn't follow any of his transactions in detail, but the general line was obvious.

 

 

"You're a reasonable fellow, Bill," he told me good-humoredly when I met him once. "You must know that when anything happens -- anything at all -- there's always something for a smart man to make out of it. Now I'll repeat an offer I made once before. If you'd like to come in with me -- "

 

 

"Ritchie," I said grimly, "you're a reasonable fellow too, in your own way, and you know damn well before you say any more that I'm not going to come in with you in any of your schemes."

 

 

Ritchie laughed as if I had made a very good joke. "That's what I like about you, Bill," he said warmly. "Cards always on the table, and no dealing off the bottom of the deck. Well, I'll be just as frank with you. From what I hear you saved Aileen's life, and I never like to feel I owe any man anything. So -- "

 

 

"So you offer me a chance you know I'm not going to take?"

 

 

"Yes," said Ritchie blandly. "You see, I think I'm making you a very good offer -- or I would, if you'd let me. If you don't like it, and turn it down, that's not my fault, is it?"

 

 

I couldn't help laughing at the insolence of this cheerful rogue.

 

 

"Call it quits, Ritchie," I said. "I like Aileen, despite the fact that she's your daughter. I'll save her life any time. How did she come to be your daughter, anyway?"

 

 

"She takes after her mother," Ritchie admitted.

 

 

You could say things like that to Ritchie. It wasn't possible to insult him. Not only did he never seem to bear malice, he never did bear malice. And yet nobody liked him. People are hard to please, aren't they?

 

 

Sometimes he reminded me of a bland, attentive maître d'hôtel who had far more money than the people he served so gracefully and assiduously. His manner must have helped him a lot. He would always, I imagined, give the impression of wanting to lend you money, wanting to help you. And only afterward would you realize how much helping you had helped him.

 

 

Sometimes, too, he reminded me of the beautiful, experienced women who have really learned the art of being escorted. Women like that let you take them out, pay enormous sums for their entertainment, wine, and dinner, take them home, kiss their hands, and leave you with the impression that it's been a wonderful privilege.

 

 

I kept finding and hearing of more and more people who in some way, to some limited extent, were in Ritchie's hands. Money was becoming, once more, a necessity, and Ritchie had money.

 

 

There were the work schemes, for example. Ritchie, still unable to work himself because of his broken leg, bought and sold labor, and nobody could do a thing about it. It was known that if you wanted a day off Ritchie could arrange it. Four or five other people would work for you, by Ritchie's arrangement, and you would sign what amounted to labies for your day's work, plus something. Even if the something was very small, there was no telling how little replacing you had actually cost Ritchie. The men who filled in for you might be heavy debtors to Ritchie, doing the job to escape a little interest.

 

 

Of course it was crazy for anyone to agree to such a thing. Most of the people who did so knew that. This was how it came about that anyone ever did.

 

 

You get into a fitful sleep at last about two hours before dawn. You are wakened with everyone else, lightheaded and gummy-eyed, stiff and sore, and you know you have a hard, heavy day's work in front of you. You think of going to the doctor, but unless you are genuinely ill that won't do you any good. You know there is a way you can have a day of glorious freedom, freedom to lie in bed if you like, go around and watch everyone else work if you like, go out and walk in the desert if you like. You shake your head and go out and work.

 

 

The next day the same temptation is before you. And every day, until at last you allow yourself just one day off. Ritchie arranges it, and it is glorious. All day you have no regrets. You are quite decided that as soon as possible you will redeem your labies . . . somehow.

 

 

That's how it happened. Ritchie was given a great chance by the inflexibility of our rules. They had to be inflexible. We couldn't allow people to do what they liked, when they liked, because there was far too much to be done. It had to be an all-out, enforced effort by everybody. Particularly after the storm had shown how acute and how immediate the problem of food and shelter was.

 

 

When the new council of PLs was elected, it met at once to decide a few more things which now had to be decided.

 

 

We passed a law that no one should be able to control more than a certain amount of laby cash at any one time. It wasn't a good law, and right away we had to make an exception in favor of the party leaders, the council members. Promptly Alec Ritchie was returned by his section as a PL.

 

 

The truth of the matter was that if there was to be law at all there was no way of stopping the rise to power of people like Ritchie. The law is always blind; it protects the honest and the dishonest, the rich and poor, the good and evil, the intelligent and the stupid. And since it's better understood and better applied by the intelligent, the evil, the rich and dishonest people, it always protects them far more than anyone else.

 

 

Morgan, with Ritchie's approval, wanted Aileen. But Aileen very clearly didn't want Morgan. She kept him at arm's length, and Ritchie didn't interfere.

 

 

The Ritchie situation had been inevitable. For the most part the people who had been brought to Mars were as intelligent and co-operative and good-natured as we could have hoped. The choice, however, couldn't be perfect; people like Ritchie and Morgan slipped through.

 

 

 

 

We accomplished a tremendous amount in a few months following the storm. When men and women realize that what they're doing is for their own personal safety, the job is liable to be done quickly and well.

 

 

Leslie's arm was completely healed. Like so many women in the settlement, she was doing her last spell of hard work before easing off in the late stages of pregnancy. Leslie was one of those rare women who could continue to be attractive right through pregnancy. Wanting the baby was part of it. Not being unduly concerned about her appearance helped too. But most of the reason was probably that Leslie was attractive independent of being beautiful. She would have been attractive if she had been fat or had gap teeth.

 

 

Twenty thousand is a pretty big labor force, particularly when things are so easy to carry that cranes and trucks are virtually unnecessary. When a force like that is really working together it can accomplish wonders.

 

 

We dug out our cliff and our caves and moved in. At first there were twenty-five so-called flats in a row and eight levels. Then we dug out a similar block at right angles. For the first time since we left Earth a few lucky couples had something resembling a bedroom to themselves. And of course every time someone moved into a flat conditions at the research station became slightly better.

 

 

People are delighted at even a small improvement in their living conditions if there has been no improvement at all for a long time. If they had been sleeping ten in a room, they found it sheer luxury when two went away and there were only eight left.

 

 

We seemed to have turned the corner merely because every month things were better. But there was no serious slacking off. It might be very nice to be sharing a room at the research station with only seven other people, but it would naturally be better still if there were only six in the room.

 

 

Leslie and I had a room to ourselves. It wasn't finished; in fact, by some standards it would have been said to be barely started. It was a little bubble drilled out of the rock. It would eventually be the kitchen of the three-room flat we were at present sharing with two other couples. But we had no complaints; not after months of sleeping in a tiny room at the research station with four other couples.

 

 

The four hundred flats begun so far thus took about twenty-five hundred people. The one big building completed on the surface, already known as the barracks, accommodated seven hundred. A warren of purely temporary caves, corridors, galleries, and cubicles blasted and hewn in one of the cliff faces, which would eventually be cleared away, gave shelter to twelve hundred single men and was thus called bachelors' hall. A similar temporary warren on the fourth side of the pit accommodated eight hundred single women, and was called old maids' hostel, though not generally by the inmates themselves, who had other ideas. The lifeships behind the research station still housed about two thousand, and the other spaceships a further thousand. All that came to eighty-two hundred, leaving not much over ten thousand to be housed at the research station. And since it had been built for seven thousand people, we weren't too badly off all around.

 

 

A day came when we had another storm, not quite so fierce as the great storm, but out of the same stable, and no one was killed. About fifty people were injured. That was all the storm could do. It didn't put work back at all.

 

 

There was general rejoicing. In a few months more we could be ready for another great storm. We should be able to snap our fingers at it.

 

 

Suddenly most of the women were having babies. They all dated from about the same time -- the moment, on the life- ships, when it must have been clear to the lieutenants in charge how little chance there was of landing safely on Mars. It wasn't clear whether these children had been conceived in wild, unreasonable hope or in complete despair.

 

 

Aileen Ritchie came to see us one evening after work.

 

 

"Hello," said Leslie, rather surprised. "You want to see Bill about something?"

 

 

"No," said Aileen. "I trained as a nurse once. I wondered if you could use some help?"

 

 

"Thanks," said Leslie warmly. "Caroline's supposed to be looking after Betty and me, but it won't be long before she has her baby too. We'll be glad of your help."

 

 

All sorts of arrangements had been made to deal with the situation. However, no matter how efficient the arrangements were, there were too many women having babies at once for the comparatively few doctors, nurses, and midwives to deal with them all. The strong, healthy girls like Leslie would have to have their babies with such half-qualifled assistance as they could get. Betty was another matter. She was already at the hospital under the doctors' eyes. Betty's labor wasn't going to be easy at best. She was too thin and frail and narrow-hipped.

 

 

I had had no particular worries about Leslie, largely because she obviously wasn't worried herself. I was glad to see Aileen coming to help, all the same.

 

 

We talked for a long time. Aileen and Leslie had long ago formed one of those casual feminine acquaintanceships which always puzzle men. They didn't seek each other out, and Leslie never mentioned Aileen, yet when they happened to be together there was no restraint between them and any male in their company was apt to feel neglected. They were alike, they understood one another, they didn't have to explain things, and they were friendly without being wildly enthusiastic about each other. Aileen and Leslie acted rather like some sisters-in-law I had known who got on well together but didn't see each other much.

 

 

They certainly had one of those mysterious feminine alliances which exclude all males and quite a few females. Half the time when they were talking I didn't know what was going on. It's good for a man to see his wife as a partner in such an alliance now and then -- keeps him from coming to the dangerous conclusion that he knows all there is to be known about her.

 

 

Another thing is that men together and women together have different standards of what they tell each other and what they don't. There are things men don't tell men and things women don't tell women, but they don't coincide. I was startled at some of the things Aileen and Leslie casually told each other, and puzzled when, obviously by mutual agreement, they avoided things that men would have made no bones about discussing.

 

 

I left them after a bit and looked in on Sammy at bachelors' hall. I told him about Aileen, of course. I always tried to mention Aileen in a favorable light to Sammy, which was easy enough because I had never heard or seen anything against her except that Alec Ritchie was her father. I had no real intention of playing matchmaker, but I could see no reason why Sammy and Aileen shouldn't get together.

 

 

Sammy had been crossed in love, and took it hard. He had never said a word about the incident or the girl -- all I knew about it was what I'd heard from old Harry Phillips. Since then he'd behaved in a perfectly normal, friendly way with Pat Darrell, Leslie, Betty, and every other girl with whom he'd come in contact. But he seemed to have formed no attachments whatever.

 

 

He was pleased with the way things were going, like most of us. "Just two more months without anything serious going wrong," he said jubilantly, "and our troubles will be over."

 

 

"Why this high optimism?" I asked. "Can't you think of anything that might go wrong, Sammy?"

 

 

"I can think of a dozen things, but I don't think any of them are likely."

 

 

So as I left Sammy, thinking Leslie and Aileen had had long enough for their heart-to-heart chat, I was reflecting that things must be even better than I had thought if Sammy was so confident.

 

 

However, Leslie was alone and frowning thoughtfully when I reached our flat. "What's the matter?" I asked.

 

 

"Aileen isn't happy," she told me bluntly.

 

 

"Why not?"

 

 

"She's beginning to hate her father. And she's afraid of Morgan."

 

 

"Aileen? I think she's making a mistake, both times."

 

 

"How do you figure that?"

 

 

"Morgan isn't really big enough to be afraid of. He's a nuisance rather than a real danger."

 

 

Leslie shook her head rather impatiently. "We've been through this already. He's only a nuisance to you. But to Betty or Aileen, or anyone else weaker than himself, he can certainly be a danger. How about Ritchie? Why is it a mistake to hate him?"

 

 

"Nobody likes him, but he doesn't actually interfere with anyone. He hasn't interfered with Aileen, or me, or you, or Sammy, or anyone else we know. If he did it would be different. Why hate a man who leaves you alone, who -- "

 

 

"You're talking nonsense, Bill," said Leslie warmly. "I suppose you'd say if a man threatened you with a gun, that was nothing, that didn't matter, until he shot you?"

 

 

I grinned. "That's hardly an exact parallel, is it, honey?"

 

 

"Maybe I'm not logical," retorted Leslie, "but I'd rather be right than logical, any day. And I think I'm right about Ritchie, and that Aileen has good reason . . . But one thing at a time. Let's go back to Morgan. You say Aileen hasn't any reason to be afraid of him. Suppose you were Aileen. Would you like to be Morgan's girl?"

 

 

"She doesn't have to be."

 

 

Leslie appealed to the heavens. "Look, Bill. Didn't you people realize what you were doing when you abolished marriage?"

 

 

"What?"

 

 

"You were abolishing all sex crimes. There couldn't be any crime connected with sex any more -- rape, adultery, bigamy -- "

 

 

"Hey, wait a minute. Assault's still a crime.

 

 

"Is it? Suppose Morgan just carries Aileen off, like a caveman. Who's to stop him?"

 

 

I started to say something, but Leslie was in full cry. She very rarely got worked up over anything. When she did, however, she could swamp most people. She had quite enough intelligence to make all the right points, when she cared to use it. I could just see her as Portia in the trial scene.

 

 

"Betty doesn't matter," Leslie went on warmly, "since by abolishing marriage you've abolished bigamy. Aileen would say it was assault, Morgan and Ritchie would deny it. And who would Aileen appeal to? Ritchie's her PL. The council wouldn't pay any attention. They haven't any sympathy for people who want to stay single.

 

 

"So any time Ritchie decides to back Morgan, Aileen becomes Morgan's girl whether she likes it or not. Use your imagination, Bill. Don't just say it can't happen. It can. It will. Aileen's already asked to be transferred to some other group, and been turned down. What now?"

 

 

"I told you," I said patiently, "that Aileen didn't have to be Morgan's girl if she didn't want to, and I meant it. She can take Sammy instead."

 

 

"Say that again."

 

 

I did. Curiously, Leslie didn't seem to have thought of that. She hesitated for a moment, put off her stroke. Then she murmured: "That's the first sensible thing you've said."

 

 

Leslie had done us an injustice when she hinted that the lieutenants didn't know what they were doing when they abolished marriage. We were a people struggling to live, a people which must grow stronger and bigger. We couldn't afford to be concerned about the moral niceties of civilization. We weren't going to argue over bigamy, adultery, divorce, remarriage, desertion, and all the rest of it.

 

 

The only thing that did still deserve some attention, we thought, was the case where a man wanted a girl and the girl didn't want him, or vice versa. Sex freedom was all very well, but it had to be freedom for both. Laissez-faire isn't freedom -- it's freedom for the strong, the determined, the persistent, and slavery for everyone else.

 

 

But someone pointed out that if A wanted B and B didn't want A, the answer was for B to find someone else.

 

 

So the PLs were told to deal sternly with assault, but with that principle in mind. In general, it was working very well. If someone, say, assaulted Caroline Stowe (not that that was at all likely, but the law must occasionally deal with hypothetical cases), and Caroline and John Stowe demanded justice, the man concerned would be very, very sorry he'd done it before the PLs concerned were finished with him. However, if some proud, beautiful girl, used to having her own way and determined to keep her figure the way it was, complained indignantly of assault, she was liable to be asked if she had some other man in mind, and if she hadn't, the offender was punished so mildly that he generally wasn't sorry at all.

 

 

I told Leslie some of this and she agreed that the lieutenants hadn't been such fools after all.

 

 

"We can hardly allow people to wait around for years to fall in love," I said. "I don't expect Sammy and Aileen are in love, or anything like it. This is a different kind of community from the one we left, and they both have sense enough to realize it. If they don't dislike each other -- "

 

 

"I'm away ahead of you," said Leslie calmly. "We'll send them out tomorrow night before it gets too cold, to hold hands and generally get acquainted. You talk to Sammy first and I'll talk to Aileen. And maybe we can get the Morrisons in the next room to move out to one of the new flats lower down, more sheltered."

 

 

So after all this time of solitary grieving, drinking, hoping, fearing, and working, Sammy found he had a girl. It was a queer, bittersweet situation, the sort of thing that would naturally happen to Sammy. For there was no pretense about it -- Aileen merely wanted a protector. She still thought she might be forced in the end to take Morgan, and she wanted to devalue herself, like a man gambling away a property because he hated the people who were going to inherit it. She would live with Sammy, but she told him -- in our room, before they went out -- with somewhat unnecessary frankness, I thought:

 

 

"I don't pretend I'm going to love you, Sammy."

 

 

"That's all right," said Sammy with similar frankness, "I don't think I'm going to love you either."

 

 

They laughed. "Well, anyway, you'll be better than Morgan," Aileen observed.

 

 

"If that's the best you can say for me," retorted Sammy, "I want a divorce."

 

 

They may have been more tender under the stars, when they went out to get acquainted. I didn't see how they could help it. When they had gone, I permitted myself for a moment to imagine myself in Sammy's place. . . .

 

 

"Enjoying it, darling?" asked Leslie tartly. I hear I'm not the first man to discover his wife is a telepath.

 

 

"I was just thinking," I said, "that on the whole I'd rather have you. Shall I tell you why?"

 

 

"Yes, please," said Leslie.

 

 

Later she said: "As a matter of fact they've been darned lucky, both of them. I don't know why either of them has been allowed to hang around single for so long, waiting for us to rub their noses together. As for the fact that they hardly know each other -- you always claimed that you weren't in love with me, didn't you?"

 

 

"That," I said, "was when I was young and foolish."

 

 

 

 

Sammy and Aileen were as matter-of-fact about living together as they had been about discussing it. The Morrisons didn't move, but another couple near us did, and Sammy and Aileen moved in at once.

 

 

Aileen insisted on taking Sammy's name. "I don't like Hoggan much," she said, "but I like it a lot better than Ritchie."

 

 

That was the first time she made any public admission of how she felt about her father. We didn't follow it up, for she didn't invite discussion of the subject.

 

 

Thereafter she insisted on people calling her Aileen Hoggan and always called her father Ritchie, as if trying to pretend that there was no connection between them.

 

 

But she wasn't allowed to leave 92. Ritchie was the PL, and PLs had a lot of power -- quite apart from the extra strings Ritchie could pull. Why Ritchie wanted to keep her in 92 wasn't clear. Apparently he said nothing whatever about Sammy -- no comment, no congratulations, no protest. He simply ignored the whole affair.

 

 

I still thought, so help me, that Ritchie was overrated. People kept muttering about what a bad influence he was, how powerful he was becoming, how essential it was to find some way of checking him.

 

 

Undoubtedly he was a bad influence, but how much did he really matter? Not very much, I thought.

 

 

Which shows that even I didn't know everything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

7

 

 

It wasn't without reason that Leslie had said in those early days that there was always something worse on the way. Whenever you were over the hill -- there was another one in front of you.

 

 

But we couldn't really rail against Fate, for every time we should have known about those hills. Every new thing we had to face was new only because we hadn't thought of it -- not because we couldn't have known about it.

 

 

We should have known about the sun, back on Earth, long before we did, and we could have known; we knew some of it. We should have known that the lifeships we made could only be space buggies, and that it would be a labor of Hercules to get them safely to Mars. We should have known what would happen when a cold, dead world, its inner fires all but out, was suddenly and unevenly heated and thrown into climatic chaos. We should have known that people couldn't get on without some kind of exchange, and that our free, moneyless Utopia would soon be a glorious breeding ground for power-mad economic emperors. We should have known that if we had breezes and winds and gales we might any day have to withstand a great storm which was the grandmother and grandfather of them all.

 

 

And we should have known, before they happened, about the murders.

 

 

It was easy, the way we lived, to murder anyone in the settlement. That was demonstrated in one short, terrible week.

 

 

On Monday night Gregor Wolkoff, a member of 67, was found knifed outside the main entrance to bachelors' hall. There was uproar and horror, certainly, but nothing to what was to come. No real fear. It was a crime of passion, obviously, and soon the killer would be found.

 

 

In fact, quite a few people I talked to stressed the utter stupidity of the murder rather than anything else. How could anyone think for a moment he could get away with such a crime, cooped up in a small space with some eighteen thousand people, all of them watching for the faintest sign of the killer's guilt?

 

 

One of the reasons why Wolkoff's death was taken so lightly was that by all accounts it was no loss to the community. Some people, true, were horrified by the very fact of murder, which we had all thought we had left behind us. But most of the people who had known Wolkoff shrugged and said he was capable of anything and there might have been strong provocation. It might be a case of self-defense -- though if that was so, we wondered, why was he stabbed in the back?

 

 

However, the situation changed completely after Wednesday night, when Jean Martine was found in the shadows among the parked ships, stabbed in the same way.

 

 

Jean Martine wasn't a member of a Iifeship crew at all. He had been third navigator in one of the regular spaceships, and was of quite a different type from Wolkoff. He was young, popular, good-looking. Nobody knew anything against him. He had a girl, and no one knew of any other love affairs.

 

 

Aileen came flying into our room soon after we heard about this second murder, breathless, wild, and scared.

 

 

"Ritchie's behind this," she gasped. "What am I going to do?"

 

 

We couldn't get anything coherent out of her for quite a while. She was obviously hysterical, and I wondered whether I should slap her. But there are some girls you hesitate to slap, and Aileen, for me, was one of them. Leslie tried to soothe her, but without much success.

 

 

Sammy came in, saw Aileen, and said mildly: "Thought you'd be here. Aren't you supposed to be looking after Leslie? Seems she's looking after you."

 

 

Whether Sammy's handling of the situation was good psychology or not, it certainly had the desired effect. Aileen gulped and shook her head to clear it.

 

 

"You think I'm crazy," she said. "You don't know Ritchie. I do."

 

 

"How do you know he's concerned?" I asked.

 

 

"Because I know him," she said bitterly.

 

 

It's a funny thing, but when people are hysterical, particularly women, you discount what they say, even when, as in Aileen's case, you know perfectly well they aren't given to hysteria. We said soothing things, but if among them there was any admission that she was probably right, it was merely because that seemed expedient.

 

 

Two days later everyone was saying that Ritchie was behind all three murders.

 

 

That third one did it. The man who died this time was PL Venters, a known opponent of Ritchie, one he had never managed to pacify, involve, or cow. And suddenly it became obvious that the three murders were a part of some plan for power, and that the planner must be Ritchie. Now that it was obvious, people remembered that Ritchie and Wolkoff had been seen together a lot, and that Martine had spoken violently and tellingly against Ritchie. They also pointed out that though Ritchie had provided himself with an alibi for all three murders, Morgan Smith, his known ally, had no alibi at all.

 

 

Public opinion is often wrong, but I didn't think it was wrong this time. Now I believed Mleen. Now I knew I'd been mistaken about Ritchie.

 

 

So I was wrong. So Ritchie was a killer. So Aileen probably had good reason to hate him.

 

 

All I can take credit for is that when I knew I was wrong I admitted it fairly and squarely to myself and revised all my ideas about Ritchie and Aileen and Winant.

 

 

I didn't like what I came up with.

 

 

Some people wanted to string Ritchie and Morgan up without trial. If I'd been in charge of things, I'd have let them do it. We couldn't afford, yet, to be fair and impartial. It was, let's say, a sixty-five per cent probability that Morgan and Ritchie between them had killed all three people, and that was good enough. Even if we had the wrong people, this swift, decisive retribution would keep the actual murderers quiet for a long time. It wasn't the justice of civilization, it was the expediency of emergency.

 

 

Unfortunately, though, since we had such a big proportion of decent, fair-minded people among us, that was vetoed. Martian law wasn't going to start with hanging without trial.

 

 

"He knew that would happen," said Aileen listlessly. "Why don't people see that law doesn't prevent crime, it makes it easy for a clever man?"

 

 

The council passed a few more laws, and one of them made it clear that we weren't following the old principle of not trying a man twice for the same crime. We would try him, and keep on trying, until we proved his guilt or his innocence.

 

 

Then we tried Morgan and Ritchie for the three murders. We didn't even manage to make it look particularly likely that they were guilty.

 

 

But they did, by their attitude.

 

 

"You have nothing for us to answer," said Ritchle blandly, "nothing for us to deny, except that we murdered these three men. I can't speak for Morgan Smith; I can only say, for myself, I didn't kill any of these men, and you all know it. I don't see why I should bother to deny inciting Smith to commit a crime which no one has established he did commit."

 

 

"Why pick on me?" said Morgan resentfully, when he was called. "I'm only one of about five thousand people who might have stuck a knife in these three guys. Are you going to hang everybody who can't prove he didn't do it?"

 

 

And that was that. There was no evidence, let alone proof. We could only discharge them. We hadn't proved Morgan's innocence, but we certainly hadn't proved his guilt.

 

 

Nevertheless, a lot of people who had been uncertain before the brief, impromptu, abortive trial were quite sure after it. Ritchie and Morgan didn't act like innocent men. They acted, very deliberately, like guilty men who were quite certain their guilt couldn't be proved.

 

 

Unfortunately that wasn't evidence.

 

 

Very soon we found we'd played into Ritchie's hands. It was now generally known that he and Morgan were killers, and that nobody could do anything about it. Ritchie could use it as a threat. He did, almost openly. His power grew and grew. It was no use people saying he wouldn't dare. Obviously he would dare.

 

 

Before this I'd never had any actual demonstration of his power. Ritchie had never really seemed any concern of mine. I had issued no contracts, nor had Leslie; there seemed no hold he could possibly have over us.

 

 

But when I made a serious attempt to have Aileen transferred to 94, I found out something of what Ritchie could do if he felt like it.

 

 

Leslie had her baby, a girl. We called her Patricia. The idea was Leslie's, not mine. I agreed without asking her whether she was thinking of Pat Darrell or not. At any rate, Aileen was so useful that Leslie felt we ought to do something for her, and what Aileen wanted was to get completely clear of Ritchie.

 

 

I thought her rather weak in this matter. You read of Trilbys completely dominated by Svengalis, but a normal person isn't so easy to dominate. All that was needed, I was certain, was that Aileen should take a firm stand and tell Ritchie firmly and without heroics what it was. However, there it was; Aileen thought she was in her father's power, and if she was to stop thinking so, someone else would have to take a hand.

 

 

I pulled all the strings I could think of to have Aileen declared independent of her PL, or transferred to another group, or anything else that would serve the purpose. Each time I was told, as I expected, "See So-and-so." On Mars people in authority were already back to the old game of refusing all responsibility, of passing the buck, of doing nothing rather than do anything wrong.

 

 

About every third time the person I was told to see was Ritchie, even if I hadn't mentioned Aileen by name. Apparently Ritchie had things arranged so that most changes had to be made, sooner or later, through him.

 

 

So I went and saw Ritchie. He had acquired one of the top flats, though he had no woman, and unlike the rest of us, he had all three rooms. That alone showed his power, wealth, and authority. He even had a stairway to the roof and had somehow managed to get part of it fenced off for his own private use. He probably saw himself as a millionaire with a penthouse.

 

 

Inside, too, there were many evidences of his special privileges. His flat was more nearly finished than any I had seen so far. He even had some rough furniture.

 

 

I ignored all that and went straight to the point.

 

 

"Why don't you leave Aileen alone, Ritchie?" I demanded.

 

 

"She's my daughter, Bill," Ritchie said gently.

 

 

"She doesn't want to be your daughter."

 

 

"She can't help it. It's an accident of Fate."

 

 

"What percentage is there for you in keeping her tied to you?"

 

 

Ritchie spoke in the same gentle tone: "I told you long ago, Bill, it wasn't money that mattered, but what you could get for it. I'm going to explain myself to you, Bill. But first I'm going to tell you why I'm doing it."

 

 

He sat back comfortably and looked at me. He was in no hurry.

 

 

"Drink?" he asked casually.

 

 

I shot a puzzled glance at him.

 

 

He reached behind him and from a recess in the wall produced a bottle and two glasses. He poured me out a drink and handed it to me. I sniffed it and sipped it.

 

 

It was raw, but it was alcohol.

 

 

"How the devil . . . ?" I began.

 

 

"Just drink it," said Ritchie. "I'll come to that. I'm going to show you a few more things, Bill. I'm glad you came to see me. I was going to ask you to come anyway, one of these days."

 

 

He downed the liquor and poured himself some more.

 

 

"What I want," he said, "is what quite a lot of people want. But I can get it. They can't. I want to be able to do what I like, eat what I like, drink what I like. I want to do things just to show I can do them. This, for example." He raised his glass. "I don't really give a damn for liquor. I can take it or leave it alone. But I like having it made, keeping it here. I like being the only man alive who can have a drink when he likes."

 

 

He smiled happily at me.

 

 

"I sell it too, of course," he said reflectively, "on a very limited scale. And it's no use thinking you can report that and have something done about it, because you can't."

 

 

He put the bottle away again.

 

 

"Now you wonder why I'm telling you this," he went on.

 

 

"I think I know," I said bitterly.

 

 

"Perhaps you do. You're thinking of fighting me, Bill. I strongly advise against it. I hate to mention Jean Martine as a threat, but in some ways Jean was very like you."

 

 

If I give the impression that Ritchie talked like an oily villain in very cheap melodrama, that's about right. The only thing he lacked was the unreasonable anger of such stage types. I don't think Ritchie knew how to be angry. He was always friendly, even when he was threatening your life. He had only one record to play. Friendliness, good humor, pleasure in your company -- however false it all was, that was the invariable background music to anything his words might happen to mean.

 

 

"Soon I will have a very efficient bodyguard," Ritchie remarked. "Even now -- Morgan!"

 

 

Morgan Smith appeared in the doorway. He had a gun in his hand, and he enjoyed pointing it at me.

 

 

"This is crazy," I snapped. "You get some scared chemist to supply you with alcohol, and there may be a lot of people who have made you silly promises, and you may control a lot of votes, but if Morgan shot me now a lot of people would dash in and you'd both be hanged. There's too much weight against you, Ritchie."

 

 

He nodded. "That's true. At the moment, anyway. No, if I really wanted to kill you, I'd have to arrange it another way. But it would be very little more difficult, Bill. You must know that. And I'm building up weight on my side. Morgan, send Edith here."

 

 

Morgan disappeared.

 

 

I got up. "I don't want any further demonstration," I said disgustedly. "No doubt this girl Edith will do anything you like. I'll believe that. I've also heard your threats."

 

 

Ritchie held up his hand in protest. "Edith works here as a servant, that's all," he said. "As far as women are concerned, I'm highly moral, Bill. I'm sorry marriage was abolished. I'm not in favor of these loose sex relations. Soon I'll have marriage reinstated, and then perhaps I might marry. But that's not what I want to talk about."

 

 

"I don't care what you want to talk about. I'm going. I take it you insist on making Aileen miserable to prove you can do that, too?"

 

 

"I'll always see," he retorted coolly, "that Aileen will have no real cause to be miserable. If she insists on pretending to herself that she is, I can't stop that. Just a minute, Bill. I expect you're even more determined to fight me now. Remember you have a daughter and a wife."

 

 

"You're threatening Pat and Leslie?"

 

 

"And you," he added easily. "If you yourself are a nuisance, it'll be you I have removed. But I know better than to try to scare you on your own account. Remember your daughter and wife when you think of doing anything."

 

 

I turned from him in white anger. A girl, Edith presumably, came in as I went out. I paid no attention to her, but I did notice she wasn't pretty. Probably Ritchie was as blameless from the sex point of view as he claimed.

 

 

Possibly also he was no sadist, unlike Morgan. Perhaps his deals were straight, according to the business ethics of dead Earth. Perhaps in many other ways he was blameless.

 

 

But none of that prevented him from being a fount of corruption, in a way I hadn't dreamed he was only a few days since.

 

 

Aileen was terribly right about Ritchie. She was right to be afraid of him.

 

 

Ritchie was still only a comparatively little man, despite his boasts. But there was nothing to stop him growing. He knew it. There would be a time when, if he and Morgan and I were placed as we had been, he could say casually, if he liked: "Shoot him dead, Morgan."

 

 

And Morgan could do it, then. Nothing would happen to either of them. Ritchie, by that time, would have things organized his way.

 

 

Only now did I really understand how vitally important we lieutenants had been back on Earth, what an enormous responsibility we had had, and how two of us at least had misused it.

 

 

Lieutenant Porter had brought Ritchie along, and I had brought Morgan Smith. Porter was lucky -- he wasn't going to see the consequences of his choice.

 

 

I was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

8

 

 

Betty didn't have a miscarriage, but her baby was born dead. We went to see her, expecting grief and hysteria.

 

 

We didn't see it. Betty was curiously calm and unconcerned. I think she had known all along that she would lose her baby, and that it would break her heart.

 

 

Leslie and I were silent as we left the hospital. Leslie wasn't back at work yet, but it would be only a day or two before she was. Eventually on Mars human beings would probably lose a lot of their physical strength through not taking enough vigorous exercise to develop it. Meantime, however, a person who would have been weak on Earth was quite capable of vigorous movement on Mars.

 

 

We were silent because we had seen a girl who had lost everything, and because we knew what it had done to her. Betty was too heartbroken, too lost to cry, to be anything but calm and apparently unconcerned.

 

 

It wasn't what had happened to Betty that mattered. If Leslie had lost me and then her baby, it wouldn't have finished Leslie. She would have cried violently, been miserable for a while, and then started to build new things into her life to replace what she had lost.

 

 

Betty wasn't going to do any rebuilding. She didn't have Leslie's capacity for that. What wouldn't have broken Leslie or Aileen or Caroline had broken Betty once and for all, beyond repair. We knew that, and didn't want to talk about it.

 

 

Presently Leslie deliberately dragged her mind and mine off Betty.

 

 

"Now we must see about giving Pat a little brother," she said brightly.

 

 

I protested. I had no quarrel with the idea in general, I said -- not in the least. "But I want to have my beautiful wife just the way she is for a little while," I added.

 

 

I hadn't told her what Ritchie had said. I didn't see what good it would do to tell her.

 

 

 

 

A few days after Leslie came back to work, the food in the settlement began to improve. There could have been a general improvement before if all the extra supplies hadn't been passed on to pregnant women. Now there weren't nearly so many, and the diet of Winant in general siowly improved in both quantity and variety.

 

 

The exploration parties had paid off. They found no vast tracts of arable land, certainly, but they found a lot of little bits. Quite a few groups were taken away to work elsewhere -- by spaceship, of course. That was the only means of transport we had.

 

 

The cattle were allowed to breed, a few of the older bulls were slaughtered, and there was a little fresh meat at last. Eggs remained in short supply for a while as chickens were hatched. There still was scarcely any milk, but it would be only a matter of time before there was plenty for everybody.

 

 

The weather was becoming much more predictable. For one thing, the climate of Mars was still settling after the big change that had come over it. For another, we were becoming more used to the signs, and what had been, at first, storms completely without warning now gave us enough advance information to enable us to gauge their intensity.

 

 

We eased off a little in our work. It was too hot in mid-summer, as it was now, to carry on with the same backbreaking labor. And the urgency wasn't as great now. We had turned the corner as far as the agricultural and accommodation problems were concerned.

 

 

Instead of devoting all our energies to providing rough-and-ready new accommodation, we now had half our force employed on refining what had been started. Slowly the cliffs were being faced with concrete, the various levels reinforced, lined, floored. We were no longer primitive cave dwellers. Our flats were beginning to resemble what we had been used to back on Earth. We couldn't paper our walls or finish them in wood, and we had no material for curtains or slip covers. But we had plenty of plaster and paint, and gradually the right plastics were being evolved to replace the cloth and leather we wouldn't have for a long time.

 

 

Landmark after landmark was passed. We had electric light long before we had water closets and taps and baths. However, these came at last. For a time we had electric radiators in the rooms. Then these disappeared and the whole block of flats had an efficient electric heating system. Big windows were put into the front rooms. None of them opened. We weren't going to make the mistake that had been made so often in Earth buildings, the mistake of having two independent and incompatible ventilation systems.

 

 

There were no outside staircases. At one time we had had to climb to our caves over the cliff face, and in high winds two or three people had been blown off the crude ladders and killed. Now there were ten broad stairways in the interior of the block, behind the flats. Soon there would be elevators.

 

 

Old maids' hostel was cleared away -- there weren't many spinsters left. We now had five thousand flats at least started, some of them almost finished.

 

 

The future would have been bright if it hadn't been for Ritchie. He was still working assiduously at his self-appointed job of undermining everything that was done, with considerable success. I saw that clearly, now that I had stopped underestimating him.

 

 

The work parties were gradually dissolving. I hardly ever saw Morgan now. I knew he was with Ritchie most of the time. And Aileen didn't have to have much to do with 92 or with Ritchie. Occasionally PLs had to report on their parties, and they were still held responsible for their people. However, the emergency period being almost over, there was more freedom for everyone. Whether it was a good thing or not, our daily life was becoming more and more like what it had been on Earth.

 

 

In the council it was becoming harder and harder to get anyone to commit himself over Ritchie. I could understand that only too well. I was only one of many PLs who didn't want to oppose him too conspicuously. I didn't fawn on him. There was no pretense that I approved of him in any way.

 

 

But I didn't dare risk Leslie and Pat.

 

 

Though Ritchie was as strong as an ox, he had never done any work in Winant. First there had been his broken leg, and when that was no longer an excuse he had got round a doctor and had himself declared unfit for hard manual labor. Later still he had too much power for anyone to be able to do anything about him.

 

 

His top-floor flat was now a well-appointed suite, at least five times as luxurious as any other dwelling in Winant. With him or near him lived Morgan and a dozen other men whom he seemed to control absolutely.

 

 

The effect of the luxury in which Ritchie lived was much more serious than it appeared on the surface. Everyone knew that Ritchie had started off level with them. They saw the gulf that had opened between him and them, and resented him, hated him, feared him, admired him, envied him.

 

 

Only two others in the whole community had accomplished anything remotely resembling what Ritchie had accomplished. They were Giuseppe Bonelli and PL Smythe, both opportunists like Ritchie, though not in the same class.

 

 

However, it's not worth saying much about Bonelli and Smythe, for just about the time when they were coming into prominence, Ritchie had them murdered.

 

 

Just like that.

 

 

This time, of course, Ritchie himself had an absolutely unshakable alibi. He had been on his sunroof with twenty other people, hand-picked as reliable witnesses. Morgan didn't have as good a natural alibi, but he had a perfectly sound bought one.

 

 

Of course we were fools to let Ritchie get away with it. We should have strung him up without trial if we could. But who was going to be the ringleader in a scheme like that, which might fail? Who was going to be known as the man who tried to get Ritchie hanged?

 

 

Not I.

 

 

One evening I met Morgan in the passages, and to my astonishment he grinned at me. I didn't want to have anything to do with him, but I was so surprised I stopped.

 

 

"Okay, Bill," he said. "We fought long enough."

 

 

I waited.

 

 

"You brought me here," he went on, "and I'm grateful. I didn't like you when you could push me around. Now you can't. No one can. You can shake or not, as you like, and I don't give a damn."

 

 

He held out his hand.

 

 

"I'd shake, Morgan," I said, "if I thought we could both really mean it."

 

 

"What do you mean?" he asked quickly, with a flash of the old resentment.

 

 

"I don't think you can honestly shake hands in friendship with anybody any more, Morgan. And I'm sorry for it."

 

 

"I've got plenty of friends," he snapped.

 

 

I shrugged. "No doubt."

 

 

Quickly he recovered his good humor. The whole act was obviously based on Ritchie. Morgan wasn't with Ritchie because he was afraid of him, but because he admired him. Ritchie was all he wanted to be. And if Ritchie never took offense, Morgan wanted never to take offense either.

 

 

"All right," he said. "But there's no reason why we should snarl every time we see each other, is there?"

 

 

"None at all," I said civilly. "I'm not snarling."

 

 

And then on impulse I made what I knew was my last appeal to Morgan.

 

 

"Morgan," I said, "if you're carrying on the way you're doing because you think it's too late to do anything else -- don't. You can always start again. Always."

 

 

"You mean -- "

 

 

"I mean if you've killed men, that doesn't mean you must always be a killer. It's never too late. The people you're moving among now probably sneer when anyone says anything like that, but sneering at a thing doesn't make it false. It isn't too late for you, Morgan."

 

 

He hesitated, uncertain. He had lost his angry defiance. He seemed to be open to reason again, which he hadn't been the last time I talked to him.

 

 

"What could I do?" he asked almost defensively.

 

 

"I don't know. You'd have to find that out for yourself. But you could do something. And Betty would help you."

 

 

"Betty?" He stared at me for a moment as if he didn't know anybody called Betty. Then he laughed, not bitterly but with real mirth. "Betty!" he exclaimed, and laughed again.

 

 

He was still laughing when Betty herself came hurrying upstairs. I looked at her in surprise. Instead of plain work clothes she wore a soft blouse and a long, pleated skirt which swung gracefully about her thin legs. She was very attractive.

 

 

"I was looking for you, Morgan," she said.

 

 

"Okay," he said. "Let's go." He grinned at me, and they went off together.

 

 

I went to our flat, puzzled. The last I knew of Betty and Morgan, just after she came out of the hospital, they had been complete strangers. Yet they had gone away arm in arm.

 

 

It looked as if Ritchie had changed his mind, and as if Morgan, knowing he couldn't have Aileen, was making the best of Betty.

 

 

It looked that way for just six hours. Late that night Aileen came quietly into our flat with Sammy. Though they were quiet, I knew at once that something was very wrong.

 

 

"Ritchie has made up his mind," she told us. "I'm to marry Morgan -- marry, you'll notice. I'm to do it willingly or else."

 

 

Leslie started to speak, but Aileen went on in the same controlled voice. "He didn't stop there. He told me or else what."

 

 

First, Sammy would die. Then Leslie. Then me.

 

 

Ritchie meant it. At first shrewd and careful, he was becoming drunk with power. He realized he had the power to do almost anything that crossed his mind -- and what good was power if it wasn't used?

 

 

"He told me," I said. "He does things just to prove he can."

 

 

Aileen nodded. "He got the idea of marrying Betty," she said. "Yes, Betty. Your Betty. He wants to marry her and make her happy. So he's giving her everything she asks for, and -- "

 

 

"Betty!" I exclaimed. "Then that's why she went with Morgan. What's her point of view on this -- marrying Ritchie?"

 

 

Aileen shrugged. "She doesn't care. She doesn't care about anything. I think she goes to the flat just to be near Morgan. That's over, really -- even for her it's over. But she still has to see him."

 

 

She dismissed Betty with a gesture. "You know," she went on, "it never crossed my mind until tonight that Ritchie was mad. Even now I don't think he is, except in that one thing. If you do mad things, even things you don't want to do, just to show people you can do them, you're crazy, aren't you?"

 

 

"What happened, Aileen?" Leslie asked.

 

 

"It was a party. They got me there, and Sammy -- "

 

 

"It was easy enough," Sammy said quietly, bitterly. "Morgan came and pointed a gun at us, and we went."

 

 

"Ritchie doesn't like wild parties," Aileen went on. "But then, you see, he was showing some friends and a few other PLs and some people he hasn't quite got in his pocket what he could do. It was the wildest party that anyone ever threw. Everything happened, short of murder. He keeps his murders discreet, and there was nothing discreet about this. You were nearly there, Leslie."

 

 

"Huh?"

 

 

"Oh, you'd have come, just as we went. Somebody suggested getting you to come and making you dance naked -- "

 

 

"For Pete's sake!"

 

 

"And you'd have done that too. You'd have realized it didn't really matter beside the threats Ritchie would have used, and meant. But Betty vetoed it. That was the only crazy thing that was stopped, though, and it was only half stopped. I had to stand in for you."

 

 

"You don't mean," said Leslie incredulously, "that Ritchie made his own daughter -- "

 

 

"You're missing the point," said Aileen coolly. "Ritchie is the boss. Nobody shares his power with him, though he may give in to Betty on a point or two. I don't matter any more than anyone else. Only he matters -- "

 

 

"He is crazy," said Leslie. "I see the pattern, but it's a crazy pattern."

 

 

"Maybe. Anyway, we needn't talk about the other things that happened, sane or insane. None of that makes any difference any more, and Ritchie is going to stop being a nuisance or an emperor or a terror or whatever he is. If nobody else is going to do anything about him, I am."

 

 

I looked at Sammy, but there was nothing to be learned from him. He was looking broodingly at Aileen.

 

 

"Killing is nasty," said Aileen in the same quiet, controlled tone, "and killing one's own father is so much nastier that I didn't even consider it until now. But it's got to be done. Already he has guards. Soon there'll be more of them. I'm one of the few people left who can get close to him. You couldn't, Bill. Sammy couldn't"

 

 

She took a deep breath.

 

 

"I'm going to kill him, but I don't want to die. I don't think I deserve to die for it. Will you help me? Will you lie, knowing people will believe you?"

 

 

Sammy had called me a tough nut, and perhaps he had had some reason. I said without hesitation:

 

 

"I'll help you, Aileen. I'll lie."

 

 

 

 

Leslie and Sammy and I were watching, on the ground. Ritchie, Morgan, and Aileen were on the sunroof -- occasionally we saw one of them. With luck, we were going to see a murder.

 

 

The most plausible accident that could befall Ritchie was to fall from the sunroof to the ground. Everyone could believe in an accident like that -- or make himself believe it.

 

 

We had argued, but Aileen and I were stubborn. Neither of us could see that it was wrong, or cared even if it was. If, back on the lifeship, I had known what Morgan would do later, I'd have seen to it that he never reached Mars. I'd have made sure something happened to him, something fatal -- and I wouldn't have felt I was a criminal. There is, after all, a great difference between execution and murder. Aileen was executing Ritchie, knowing he deserved execution, knowing someone had to do it. She was probably right, too, when she said she was one of the few people who could do it.

 

 

Sammy wasn't so happy about it. "I wish I were God," he muttered, as we waited. "Then I'd know 'what was right. What an infernal situation . . ."

 

 

He stopped abruptly as we saw a head moving. It disappeared again.

 

 

The pit was now so deep that we could make out very little at the top. When people came close to the waist-high stone parapet we could see their heads and shoulders, and their legs through the spaces in the stonework. Unless they were close we couldn't see them at all.

 

 

In the circumstances there could be no warning. We couldn't see what led up to the incident we were to misreport. Our bias would be known, of course -- but who would care? Who would speak up for Ritchie? Who would be sorry if he died? Who would try to prove we were lying?

 

 

Presumably Aileen would be working patiently to get rid of Morgan, whom we knew to be present on the roof.

 

 

"It's a mad scheme," murmured Sammy. "Ritchie knows everybody hates and fears him. He knows Aileen would be glad if he were dead. He won't be such a fool as to -- "

 

 

"Look!" Leslie screamed.

 

 

It looked as if Sammy was right. We saw two men and a girl struggling on the edge. What had gone wrong we didn't know. But clearly Aileen had moved too soon, made a mistake, given herself away -- or Ritchie had been expecting her attempt, waiting for it.

 

 

Anyway, she was going to fail. Her only chance had been surprise, to get Ritchie to the edge unsuspecting.

 

 

"I'm going up there," said Sammy desperately.

 

 

"Wait!" I said.

 

 

It was two men against a girl. Perhaps the two men, knowing that, were careless. Perhaps they forgot that though their strength was still overpoweringly greater than hers, the thrust of her legs was enough to raise all three of them quite easily against the 0.38 gravity of Mars.

 

 

Struggling in Morgan's grip, she lashed out with one foot. Through the gaps in the stonework we saw her leg whip up straight, so fast that it was a blur, and though a support blocked our view we winced involuntarily as her toe sank into Ritchie's belly.

 

 

On Earth that kick would have winded Ritchie, perhaps injuring him seriously. But this wasn't Earth. It lifted him perhaps two feet. He crashed back against the parapet, probably breaking his back. That didn't stop him either. His legs came up and he somersaulted over, turning in the air.

 

 

Instead of watching the roof, as we should have done -- for Ritchie was already as good as dead, and didn't matter any more -- we watched him, unable to look away, even when he struck the ground sickeningly.

 

 

When we looked up again, Morgan had both hands on Aileen's throat, and from the way his shoulders were hunched we knew they must be biting deep. Morgan was loyal to Ritchie to the end, apparently. He wanted revenge for Ritchie more than he wanted Aileen.

 

 

Then with a lithe backward flip Aileen wrenched Morgan off his feet and her shoulders back over the parapet. She must have put all her strength into it. Morgan sailed over, screaming.

 

 

She went over too, of course.

 

 

Sammy moaned even before they struck the ground. I knew what he was thinking. He had lost two women he loved, one on Earth and one on Mars.

 

 

Despite the horror of the thing, despite Sammy's pain, I couldn't help feeling a sense of relief. Even if it had to be grim and bloody and melodramatic like that, Mars was the better for it.

 

 

There was a thin cry from above. We looked up. Leslie gasped and shaded her eyes, screwing them up to see better.

 

 

"I think that's Aileen!" she exclaimed.

 

 

"Then who . . . ?" I began.

 

 

"It is Aileen," Sammy shouted.

 

 

We waved to her, and ran to where Morgan had fallen. We winced as we looked at them. His hands were still around Betty's throat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

9

 

 

We could only guess at Betty's state of mind. From the timing, she had obviously guessed what Aileen intended. Whether Betty had meant all along to kill Morgan or had done what she did in a sudden frenzy was anybody's guess. At any rate, she had sent Aileen inside for something, and when Aileen came back there was no one on the roof.

 

 

Very likely, as Sammy had said, Ritchie distrusted Aileen. But neither he nor Morgan seemed to have any distrust of Betty. We found it ironic, when we tried later to reconstruct the incident on the basis of all we knew, that Ritchie had probably been trying to save Betty from Morgan when she kicked him. Betty must have made some move against Morgan. That would probably only amuse Ritchie. He would have gone forward to break Morgan's grip. And Betty kicked him over the edge.

 

 

But these were only guesses. Aileen had meant to kill, and hadn't had to.

 

 

"I can't say I'm glad things have happened this way," she said. "I -- "

 

 

"You can't say it, but you are," Sammy observed.

 

 

"I know I am," Leslie said. "Betty's life wasn't any good to her."

 

 

We still had big problems, we still had a struggle to live on a world that wasn't our own. However, it was nice to get on with it without the knowledge that we were always in danger of being stabbed in the back.

 

 

Sammy was in a daze for nearly a week. The certainty that it had been Aileen who had died had really shaken him. It was no use pretending after that that he didn't love her.

 

 

"Why are some people ashamed of perfectly decent emotions?" Leslie marveled. "Do you think Aileen will laugh at you for loving her, Sammy? If so, you haven't learned the first thing about women -- the very first thing."

 

 

"Hell, Leslie," Sammy protested, "don't you start."

 

 

"The truth is," Leslie told him, "you don't believe in happy endings. It doesn't seem possible that Aileen is safe and prepared to love you and be loved, does it?"

 

 

"Let us have no more talk of love," Sammy ordained. "Love is a feminine myth, invented for the benefit of females. It's always women who talk of love."

 

 

With Ritchie removed, the Martian settlement moved on more surely, more in step, more cleanly. No one took on Ritchie's mantle. Now that he was dead, people spoke freely about him and his works.

 

 

There was a startling change. Startling, that is, if you don't know human beings. Apparently Ritchie had had no friends. Apparently no one had ever liked him or supported him in any way. Apparently no one had ever been afraid of him.

 

 

The whole of Winant, it seemed, had been just about to put Ritchie in his place. There were suddenly all sorts of things that could have been done about Ritchie. Obviously, by being killed, he had merely escaped what was catching up with him, and would have caught up with him if he'd lived a few days longer.

 

 

Lieutenant Porter and I had both made mistakes. Fortunately they canceled each other out in the end.

 

 

My group was what it should have been all along, a sound and healthy body of people. With Aileen in it, and Morgan out of it, it was a group of people who liked each other, could get on well together, and believed in the same sort of things.

 

 

"Of course," said Sammy, "this is only the beginning. Look at what we've had to face in the last year or so. Take the supremely optimistic view and say that this year things will only be half as bad -- "

 

 

Leslie yelped involuntarily. "Aileen, shut him up, for heaven's sake," she exclaimed. "Sammy being supremely optimistic -- like that -- is just about enough to make me want to go away in a dark corner and cut my throat."

 

 

"I am being supremely optimistic," Sammy insisted. "Oh well, if you all want to live in a fool's paradise, don't let me stop you."

 

 

"I won't, anyway," said Aileen quietly. "There never is an ending, Sammy, we all know that. But there are turning points, and afterward when we look back we see how we were going down and down and down, until something happened and we started coming up and up and up. I think that's where we are now."

 

 

"Well, sure," said Sammy. "Didn't I say that things this year will only be half as bad as they've been so far?"

 

 

Sammy was right, and we all knew it. But we refused to listen to him all the same.

 

 

"You belong in the Old Testament," Leslie told him.

 

 

I grinned. "And Sammy begat Ahab," I said. "And Sammy begat Rebecca. And Sammy begat -- "

 

 

Sammy and Aileen fled.

 

 

"And Bill begat . . . ?" Leslie suggested.

 

 

I think you could justifiably describe the way we kissed as supremely optimistic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

J. T. McINTOSH

The author of World out of Mind and
Born Leader was born in Scotland and
attended the University of Aberdeen.
He was only ten when he brought out
his first magazine -- The Diamond --
which consisted mainly of a two-hun-
dred-word story and a masthead. At
the age of eleven, on the basis of sev-
eral more stories, he was answering
the familiar schoolroom question:
"Now what are we going to be when
we grow up?" with a quiet assurance.
"I'm going to be a journalist."

Mr. Mcintosh became a journalist
and worked for several years as a sub-
editor of a newspaper before interest
in the news of the future replaced his
interest in the news of the present.
Since then he has written several top-
flight science-fiction novels and
science-fiction stories, which he has
very successfully published both in
England and in the United States. Mr.
McIntosh lives and writes in Aber-
deen.



Published by
DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY. INC.

Publishers of the Thorndike-Barnhart Comprehensive Desk Dîctionary

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.











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