Walter M. Miller, Jr. SECRET OF THE DEATH DOME (Amazing Stories January 1950)

Amazing Stories January 1950

Walter M. Miller, Jr.

SECRET OF THE DEATH DOME

THE MARTIANS came in a huge dome from out of the sky and sat it down in the desert, to watch. Earth was their zoo, and their dome an impregnable cage. So it seemed at first. Then it was whispered in the halls of Man that Earth was the cage, and the dome was the Outside. For Man had thrown himself in vain fury against the dome's outer surface, while the dome-men yawned and watched from their unassailable fortress.

Their mission was obscure. They did not attack. Neither did they offer friendship. For ten years thereafter Earth was like a house of glass. Man lived in it uneasily, but without change. Boys who were eleven had grown to adulthood with the dome as a constant, ominous shadow. They were tired of hearing about it. They got married and had children. Martians? So what?

A stale of war existed in theory. The Martians had behaved in a manner that justified war. They seized curiosity-seekers and used them as specimens. The dome was the target of the most magnificent of Earth weapons. Its resistance was passive. It sat unharmed. Martian hostility was evidently only curiosity. And when H-bombs exploded harmlessly, Earthmen blushed and ceased the attacks to save themselves embarrassment. For want of a better course, they ignored the dome.

But the military maintained an alert. Towns grew up at a safe distance from the dome to house scientific investigators and the men who patrolled the neighboring desert. They had jobs to do—routine jobs with government salaries.

Then Barney Willis came in out of the desert and died. Another specimen for the Martians. He died at the edge of town. Masterson, the blacksmith, saw him pitch off his horse and lie in the road. He saw the uniform of the special patrol—blue and gray—fluttering in the hot wind off the desert. He went out and felt his wrist: then he called the colonel.

The colonel sent Jerry Harrison to see about it. Jerry was just a sergeant, but there wasn't any need for brass. Death is for privates. And Barney's death was his wife's tough luck, but it was nothing new. Of course, the colonel didn't stop to think that Barney was Jerry's best friend—so good a friend that they were still friends after Barney married Jerry's girl. Big blond Barney with the damn-fool grin and thin hard Jerry with the angry eyes—side-riders. Mac-Pearson, who ran the Tavern, chained a couple of barstools together for them as a joke. Sort of a marriage ceremony, he said.

JERRY GOT to Barney while the crowd was gathering. Barney was a limp heap. The blank face looked queer without its grin. Stand back, stand back for the special patrol! Give him light! It's almost dark and he's got to see!

There wasn't any blood. The body was still hot—too hot, fresh from the desert and the sun.

"You women scram," Jerry growled. "I'm going to loosen his clothes. It may not be pretty."

The women retreated to the outer circle.

"How long is this going to last?" somebody wanted to know.

"Blow them off the planet, I say!" said a plump man in a business suit.

Jerry opened the dead man's shirt. No chest wound. The abdomen, maybe. Maybe they borrowed his liver to see how it worked. They were like that.

"Blow the dome ten light-years into space!" said the plump man. "If we can't dent it, we can move it half to hell."

"Then what'll we breathe for air?" asked a calm voice. "Alpha particles? Do you realize how much uranium..."

Jerry loosened the dead-man's belt. Then he buckled it again lest the crowd see what he had seen. Earth men were funny about some things, especially in crowds. They might form a mob and go out to the dome. Damn-fool living, loving, hating humans.

"What's wrong with him, sergeant?" asked the plump man.

Jerry stood up with Barney in his arms. "He's dead. That's all." Then he added—"Sunstroke, mister."

It was true. Barney had left his hat at the dome. He'd left something else too. They'd dosed the wound with the strange white film they used for surgery, so there wasn't any blood. But the crowd didn't have to know about that.

Jerry put him in the back of the station wagon and drove toward headquarters. He was glad Barney had left his hat behind. Barney would be glad too. He was mercifully dead. Because he wasn't a man anymore. And Betty was young and brown and firm as a grape. And loyal. She wouldn't have left him if he'd lived. She'd have moved to another bedroom to save embarrassment; but she'd have gone on cooking his meals and singing while she worked. That was the way she was. Barney couldn't have faced it.

Knowing Barney, Jerry was puzzled. Why had he tried to come back at all?

Colonel Beck's rock-ugly face wore its usual hard hatred as he peered over the coroner's shoulder at the body laid out on a table under the glaring light. He turned to glare at Jerry who sat slumped by the door.

"Why the hell did they do that, sergeant?" he snapped.

Jerry shook his head.

The colonel cursed softly and looked back at the body: "You'd think they knew he just got married. You'd think they..." He paused and frowned. "Now how the hell would a damn sexless Martian think of a thing like that! Make an eunuch of him and send him home to his new bride. It beats me, sergeant."

"How do you know they're sexless?"

"Hell, man! Their broadcasts from the dome! Don't you listen?"

JERRY KNEW what he meant. The Martians barged in on the broadcast-band to ask questions about earth biology and other things that they couldn't learn by dissecting captives. They offered information about Martian society and Martian science in return. The government finally ordered that non-secret material be released to them in the hope that the brutal vivisections would cease. The dome-men replied by radioing lectures on Martian history, psychology, and physiology. But how much of it was true?

"What bothers me," Jerry muttered, "is why Barney came back at all—like that."

The colonel snorted indifferently.

"Maybe he had something to say. Maybe he found out something important that he wanted to report. Maybe..."

The colonel was impatient. "Use your head, sergeant," he said. "The Martians can erase a human mind like a blackboard. Nobody that's ever come back from them alive can remember anything about them. Even what they look like. You know that! They get through with a man and then pick the memories out of his mind like fleas off a dog."

It was true. Yonkers, who had left his legs in the dome, could remember riding out on patrol and passing the jutting rock. Then his memory cut off like a light. He could then remember being in a blackened room whose ceiling was so low that he had to stoop. Then memory stopped again. He remembered intense pain and a grating sensation in his legs, but no visual image accompanied it. The Martians pinched out just those memory images that they didn't want to be there.

"Maybe he knew or saw something that they didn't know he saw," Jerry suggested.

"That's silly!"

"Then why did he come back?"

"Because he wanted to live, man!"

With his new bride? Like that? The colonel didn't know Barney like Jerry did.

The coroner called it death by sunstroke, and there was no use running an autopsy.

"Sergeant Harrison," the colonel said sweetly. "I'm detailing you to find out what it was you think he saw. You take his patrol tomorrow."

Jerry nodded. He had meant to ask for it anyway. But Colonel Beck was angry. He had lost a scout. Good scouts were scarce. He couldn't get back at the Martians, so he took it out on Jerry. But Jerry was willing.

"Check your little theory, sergeant," the colonel went on in a sugary tone. "Get close to the dome. Poke around a bit. Prod it with a stick, maybe. Don't forget your magnifying glass."

Jerry stiffened. No horseman had ever been that close—voluntarily. Only infantry and tanks.

"You think I'm afraid?" he asked.

"I don't give a damn whether you are or not!" Colonel Beck growled. "It's an order."

Jerry stood up to leave. "Yes, sir. I'll see what I can find."

The colonel's sadistic appetites were not yet satiated. "One other thing, sergeant," he said. "Take Willis home to his wife."

"Colonel!..."

"I'll call her, of course—and drop in to pay my respects tomorrow. But you take him home. The jailhouse is no place for a dead family man. We can get an embalmer out of the city tomorrow."

"I'd rather not..."

"Sergeant! You don't have to tell her what they did to him. Just sunstroke, that's all."

There was no arguing with him. Jerry obeyed reluctantly. It wasn't going to be a pleasant task—carrying Barney in to Betty. He drove as slowly as he could on the way.

Two questions troubled him. The colonel's and his own. How had such an amputation occurred to a sexless Martian? And—why had Barney come back—unless he knew something? There were a lot of maybe's, but none seemed satisfying.

BARNEY'S house was like all the houses in the row—government construction—a white frame house with ivy-trellises. One thing was different—the woman who kept it. She stood in the doorway when they drove up—white, tight-faced, grim, beautiful. A strong girl. No girl to wail helplessly with grief. Barney knew her well—too well. She would sit and think and hate. She would be a widow until the Martians were driven from the earth.

Jerry and the corporal took the stretcher up the walk. Barney was covered with a sheet. She held the door open for them.

"Save it, Jerry," she said when he opened his mouth. "The colonel called me."

No use complaining about it, she might have added. He did what he could for Earth.

They laid him out on the bed, and the corporal went back to the car. Betty bent over the body in the evening gloom that came from the window. And her thin fingers barely touched his yellow hair. Her own dark hair shrouded her face, a black curtain about her cheeks, hiding whatever she felt. Then she kissed him— lighty—as she might kiss a child. Jerry shuddered. A childish kiss. No use kissing him like a man, even in death. Not after what they did to him.

She turned, but he couldn't see her eyes in the dim light. Thank God for that! It hurt bad enough just to look at her; he had loved her long before Barney.

"When are we going to get even, Jerry?" Her voice was icy.

Vengeance—an Earth-woman's concept. Good old Earth, with its grief and its rage and its fiery hate. Martians couldn't feel such illogical emotions—so the broadcasts said.

"Sorry, Betty," he said weakly. "I'm just a scout, not a senator."

She watched him for a silent time. Then she turned away. "And I'm just a woman."

Her tone struck him like a slap. There were a lot of things in it— scorn, hate, determination.

He left as quickly as he could. He sent the corporal back with the car and walked homeward in the moonlight.

The Martian dome glimmered faintly in the distance across the desert. High, proud, evil. Shining in the moon-glow. What right had Martians to bask under the Earth's moon? He passed a couple with two small children—going home from the movie, maybe. Life went on; there was nothing else it could do. While the dome watched it.

The couple with the children reminded him of Barney. And Betty. She was built just right for bearing kids. Efficiently constructed...

Jerry hated himself suddenly for the thoughts that began creeping up from the depths. But hell! He couldn't help feeling what he did. The Id had a hairy chest and carried a stone axe; it never heard of moral law.

The Martians had no Id—so the lecturer said. Their minds operated entirely on the conscious level.

HE STOPPED in the Tavern for a beer. MacPearson saw him coming and sneaked around to unchain his stool from Barney's. But Jerry saw him do it. A hush fell over the place when he came in, and several voices murmured at him as he passed. "Sorry to hear about..."

He took a seat and the conversation picked up again. For awhile he listened to the angry voices.

"Get all the uranium on earth and blow the dome to hell!"

It was the old argument, and Jerry was sick of it. How to get rid of the dome. It had been blasted and bombed and gassed and infected with bubonic plague. But the dome's radio voice congratulated the bombardiers for their accuracy—on the aircraft command frequency. And thanked them po1ite1y—ominously, perhaps—for such an insight into Earth's military science. The dome was undented.

"Keep pumping lewisite into the vents. Their air-filters can't last forever."

Jerry looked disgustedly at the speaker. But the speaker was too interested in his own opinions to notice. Everybody had helpful suggestions; but nobody was mad enough to spend millions of dollars and millions of lives. After all, who had died? Only a few scouts. Everyone was intellectually angry; no one was mad down deep in the belly. Except Betty, maybe.

And Jerry?

Why should Jerry be mad? Now he had a chance at Barney's widow. Wasn't that just fine?

He pushed his beer aside and left the bar quickly. He went home to a breezy bed. The wind came off the desert, bearing with it the familiar odor of—of whatever the Martians were doing. It kept him awake.

Four blocks away was another bed—with a dead man in it. And Betty sleeping on the couch. Life went on. And death.

Funny, though—the Martians didn't die. They just went to sleep and split in half like amoebae—and then there were two. They kept their sexless daddy's memories. Why not? Same brain, divided between them. The lecturer said so. Wouldn't it be funny if you could remember when your thousand-times-great grandfather bashed in his brother's head with a club? And stole his wife, maybe?

Betty. He kept thinking of Betty. When are we going to get even, Jerry? Vengeance. Earth-bound Betty, corn-fed, and raised up by common old earth-standards. A dark little snake who could love or sting.

Did she think hate would work better than H-bombs?

Did he hate the big pink bodies inside the dome? With the red stripe down the middle where they divided? The headless creatures with humps on their back for brain-cases? They loved to have the line stroked—so the lecturer said. Maybe the lecturer lied. Maybe they didn't like to have the stripe stroked. Maybe they had screaming meemies if you even touched it. Everybody believed the lecturer. They drew sketches of the Martians from the lecturer's descriptions. But why should the lecturer lie about such trivialities?

The Martians were so polite. They thanked the scout when they plucked out his eye to see how he saw. Not torturers—just curious. And when the engineers burrowed under the dome secretly to plant a few H-bombs, the dome picked itself up out of the crater, sat down a mile away, and ignored the incident as a lady ignores a drunk.

JERRY COULDN'T sleep. He could hear Minnie shifting about restlessly in her stall. So he pulled on his boots and went out to keep company with his mare. Maybe she was thirsty. He had forgotten to water her.

But ten minutes later he had saddled up. He gathered his paraphernalia, swung into the familiar seat, and trotted westward under the midnight moon. The dome was a faint luminescence in the distance. He had no idea what he meant to do. It was just an urge.

He rode for two hours until he reached the row of stainless steel stakes that marked a five-mile circle around the dome. It was the scouting radius; he had ridden it thousands of times. He reined up and gazed at the hemispherical fortress. Its impenetrable surface shimmered slightly in the silvery light, like an asphalt road in the hot sun. Perhaps it was the desert air. Or perhaps the Princeton professor was right in his theory that the dome's metallic sheath was immersed in a field that increased the inter-molecular forces by a tremendous amount.

The dome appeared to be sleeping peacefully under the moon. But Jerry knew that it was awake and watching. It saw the single rider on the scouting circle. It could devour him if it wished. But it could feel neither anger or amusement. Its only dangerous sentiment might be curiosity.

How many more days would he ride around it before they got curious? Or needed another specimen. Then they would pluck out his heart, or muse over his cortex. Or do what they did to Barney. He was helpless before it.

He dismounted and sat under the edge of a bluff to think. He felt more comfortable in the shadows. There was nothing he could do—except his job. Just ride circles around the bean-pot and hope for the best.

Soon he dozed. He was awakened by a faint thump. He started up. Another thump. It came from nowhere in particular. He could feel it more than hear it. It was in the ground and in the air. Suddenly he knew what it was. It had happened to an old prospector once. He got too close to the dome and said he felt a kind of thudding in the air that grew and grew until it beat him senseless. He told about it just before he died of a brain hemorrhage.

Thunk! Thunk!

He winced and looked for a place to hide. Minnie neighed and strained at her rope. The thunks were little twinges in the bones.

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

Harder this time. He made a dash for the mare. But Minnie reared up with a shriek and the rope pulled loose from the rock. She set off homeward at a gallop.

The thudding stopped, as if its purpose had been accomplished. The Martians had driven away his horse. Why?

HE LOOKED around. He had stashed his Thompson sub and his walkie-talkie under the edge of the bluff. But he'd left the two canteens of water on the horse.

He thought of calling for help on the radio. But no one but the Martians guarded the frequency at night. He would have to wait for daylight, or try to go back on foot. But if the Martians wanted him, walking away would do no good. They could thump him down or prod him with the stinging beams that hurt on the side away from the dome and made the victim run screaming toward it, to escape the intense burning that followed behind.

He sat down under the bluff again to wait for dawn. He stared at the hateful fortress until he could close his eyes and see its after-image.

The sky grew gray, then red in the east. The dome took on the color of the sunrise. He called control. The channel was silent. He tried again in half-an-hour—this time with results.

"Scout Three from Control. What happened, Jerry? Your horse came trotting into town at six o'clock."

"Martians sent her scampering. Get somebody out here with another. Six miles east of the beanpot."

A cold metallic voice cut into the frequency. "That will be unnecessary. That will be unnecessary."

And that was all. The dome had spoken and fallen silent. Jerry breathed heavily into his mike but said nothing. He watched the dome fearfully. It wanted him. No use sending another horse.

The dispatcher lowered his voice as if to keep the Martians from hearing. "Sit tight, Jerry. We'll get somebody out there right away. We'll send everybody that's not out looking for Betty Willis."

Jerry found his voice again quickly. "Looking for who?"

"Betty Willis. She may be off her rocker. Sat up all night with the body. When your horse came in, she called up the colonel and said it was her fault. Something she said to you. Next thing you know somebody saw her galloping out of town. She's headed for rough country, or she'd have taken the car."

The metallic voice cut in again. "Tell us why the woman reacts in this manner. Tell us why she behaves illogically."

The dispatcher began cursing and went off the air to finish the oath.

"Hate, beanpot," Jerry hissed at his mike. He had nothing to lose by being brazen. "Now tell us one. Why did you do that to her husband?"

The voice came back calmly and quickly. "We wish to examine human heredity mechanisms. We wish to make a human organism. We have tried previously without success. Now we shall succeed."

Jerry's vision clouded with red flashes of hate. Make a human organism! "Why don't you just borrow one," he choked. "Me, for instance."

"Thank, you. But we wish to make several changes in the structure. Thank you."

JERRY PUSHED the walkie-talkie aside and stood up. Then he lifted it for a last word to the dispatcher. "When you find Betty, tell her we're going to get even." Then he dashed the radio to the rocks. And with the sub-machine gun under his arm, he began walking toward the dome.

He was running amok. He knew it. Don Quixote. Damn fool. They could kill him any instant. He was going to die. Foolishly. For nothing at all. He couldn't even make it count. Still he walked on.

Make a human organism!

And the Lord God made man of the slime of the earth. And breathed in his face the breath of life. And man became a living soul. Maybe that wasn't true. But it sounded better than the way the Martians said it.

The impotency of his wrath! He realized it. It made him more angry. The meaninglessness of his gesture. Of his grim march toward the omnipotent enemy.

The radio was still working. Far behind him he could hear its voice. The dispatcher was calling excited questions. The Martian was asking about illogical behaviour.

Why didn't they shoot him? Or blast him with the thumping outfit. (Was it supersonic?)

A sane spark in Jerry's mind told him to go back. The sane spot spoke coldly, logically. But it had no control of his rage. For years he had ridden the circle, knowing every moment that he was helpless. A mouse stalking a tiger. A foolish strutting little earthling, at the mercy of the dome. He had grown to resent it more and more. Now the resentment broke the dam and swelled into a torrent of hate. He stalked onward.

In two hours he was within tommy-gun range of the dome. He stopped to slip a fifty-round drum on his weapon. No one but infantry and tanks had been this close before. They had assaulted it futilely. It closed its shell and went to sleep while they gnawed at the impenetrable—what?

It looked like ordinary steel. But diamonds couldn't mark it. Uranium couldn't dent it. Acid was harmless to it. It was curiously non-conductive to electricity and heat; the Martians could not be roasted out. Its thermal conductivity had been estimated— somewhere around a billionth of a BTU per hour per degree Fahrenheit per cubic foot. It could sit on the surface of the sun for awhile with that kind of insulation.

JERRY FIRED a burst at it, just to spend a little anger. The bullets never ricocheted. They stuck to the surface, like iron to a magnet. Maybe the Princeton professor was right. There wasn't any such metal.

Well, here he was. And there it was. Why didn't they come out and get him? But they never came out. Even the desert was too humid to suit them. Moisture made them itch. The lecturer said so.

He was thinking more calmly now. They had let him come this close for a reason. Maybe they wanted to observe anger reactions. Martians couldn't feel anger. The lecturer—damn the lecturer! Maybe they'd take out his adrenals to see how they worked.

Maybe it gave them a warm feeling to see him wandering about helplessly. "There goes the enemy, but here we are nice and safe in our igloo."

The sun was getting hot. It gleamed on the glazed ground, where the uranium blasts had fused the rocks. Once the ground had been grazing land—poor land, to be sure, but covered with a sparse grass. But that part of the desert had had no rain for ten years. Since the Martians came. Mother Earth had changed her weather to suit Martian comfort. But the meteorologists said it was a coincidence.

He started walking around the dome. They knew he was there. They watched silently. They hadn't even bothered to retract the stilts it stood on. It sat on three short fat legs, its flat bottom three feet above the desert floor. When the infantry came, it pulled in the legs and sat down on its belly. Once it sat down on some of the infantry. They had crawled under to find an air-vent through which to pump gas. The Martians had evidently cleaned up the G. I. cadavers for specimens, because the ground beneath the dome was barren and boneless.

He shouted at the fort. "Come out and get me, you bastards! Come on!"

Of course they couldn't answer him without his radio. They had no vocal cords. But their bodies could generate radio waves and modulate them in any way they pleased. The lecturer said their synaptic connections were so quick-triggered they could perceive each separate pulse of audiofrequencies. And duplicate them exactly with a modulated carrier wave. That was the way they communicated with each other. They could vary their output from a whisper to a hundred watts.

"Well, damn it! Do something!" he shouted helplessly.

The desert was silent, and the dome shimmered in the heat. He glanced back toward town. A single rider was approaching the scouting circle. Too late now.

The sun was beating upon him heavily. His throat was dry and burning for water. He wandered about aimlessly for a time, cursing and firing bursts against the dome.

Hell, if they wouldn't come out, then he'd try to get in! There were bound to be vents under the dome. He slung the tommy-gun and crawled under the edge. The center would be the logical place to look. But it was a half-mile crawl. He set out determinedly on his hands and knees.

AS HE MOVED slowly and painfully along, the darkness deepened and the white desert sunlight was a painful band of brightness in the distance. Folly upon folly. The Martians were playing with him. Willfully he was moving into their trap. When he was far enough under, they would start to sit down—slowly, so he would make a run for safety. Then when he was almost out, they would

drop their low, flat belly upon him. He began to feel the things a claustrophobiac feels.

I'm just a woman, Jerry. Betty's scorn was a whip that lashed him on. Or maybe the scorn wasn't in her tone, but rather—in his own conscience. And in the conscience of the world. Why isn't humanity man enough to do something?

A sudden shrill sound made him freeze. It came from behind. Far behind. He knew the death-shriek a horse sometimes makes. It chilled him. A rider had followed him to the dome. The Martians had killed the animal— and perhaps the rider.

He crawled on.

He kept bumping against the ceiling. Had the dome moved, or was the ground rising slightly? The metal felt body-temperature,—illusively. But that was because it was non-conductive, according to the Princeton theory. The physicists said it was near absolute zero, its molecules locked tightly in place by the strength of a field which was thought to irradiate it from within. The particles could not even vibrate with heat energy. What would happen if the field were suddenly released? A wine-glass dropped in molten steel?

His hands and knees were bloody from the rough ground. But as he neared the center, he felt a strong draft of air. He was approaching a vent.

He found it by moving down-wind and feeling with his hands. He could see nothing but the thin vein of white light around the rim of the dome.

He found it—and his heart sank. It was protected by heavy louvers, set a few inches back in the opening. He stretched out in exhaustion beneath the vent. A gale of air arose about him. He fired a short burst up into the vent, but nothing happened. The sound was deafening, and the flashes lit up the blackness for a moment. That was all.

He lay quietly recovering his strength and waiting.

Thump! Thump!

He felt the shocks pass through him and his hand went numb. At close range, the sonic cone was narrow. It missed his body. The Martians were firing in darkness. He looked around quickly. Something broke the thin vein of light. A silhouette! It moved, a few feet away.

He rolled over and blasted at it with the tommy-gun. Something crumpled and fell to the ground. Then the metallic slap of a hatch closing. He crawled to his target and felt it cautiously. A hot gritty little body. Hard as a rubber tire. But the rubber had holes in it, and they oozed a thick, viscous fluid that began to crystallize in the dry air. Martian bodies were dry-fleshed.

But was this a Martian? He had seen sketches of them, done from the lecturer's descriptions. The sketches were wrong. He could tell just by feeling the body. The wrongness was quantitative. The sketches showed huge, thick-limbed creatures. This dead beast was bony and rather small. The lecturer had lied. Why? Were they afraid, in spite of their impenetrable dome?

HE STRUCK a match and looked. A spindly, pink, headless creature, whose brain was in the bulge on its back. The dividing line was a livid red scar that ran along the bulge and around under the belly, marking the creature exactly in half.

Before the match flickered and burned his fingers, he made another discovery. The lecturer had lied more than once. He said the Martians were sexless. But this dead thing was obviously a female!

It startled him. They might try to hide weakness with lies. But why sex?

They split, all right, like the lecturer said. There was the red scar. But two sexes. The female probably must be fertilized before she could divide. And perhaps the male couldn't divide at all. The male shouldn't have the scar—or else only a vestigal one.

But why the secrecy?

He shifted uncomfortably in the cramped darkness and bumped his head on the ceiling. His hands flew upward, and his palms pressed against it, like Atlas supporting the sky.

He choked back a scream.

The dome was sitting down. The ceiling was moving slowly but perceptibly. The desert was half a mile away.

He crawled back to the vent and fought at the louvers with his hands. They were of the field-strengthened metal. But they were recessed a few inches. If he lay under the vent, he would have another minute or two of life—before he was cut in neat slices.

He cursed his foolishness. He cursed Colonel Beck and the Martians. He thought a curse at Betty, then drew it back. She couldn't help saying what she had done.

He fired a burst into the dust again. No effect. He shouted insults into the black maw. The dome settled without a pause.

"I came to bargain with you," he called in desperation. "The government sent me."

The descent continued, but after a moment a loud-speaker voice crackled in a monotone. "That is an untrue statement. We have observed your duties. You spoke an untrue statement." The voice was coldly polite.

He shrieked more curses at them.

"Your emotions are interesting," the loudspeaker noted. "We are recording your audible expressions. Would you please notify us when pain begins?"

He fell silent. The louvers were about two feet above the ground, now. He tried digging in the earth, but it was caked and dry. The blast of air faded as the fans were shut off. Then he heard the slow scrape of doors closing above him. He reached through the louvers and felt the metal jaws pulling together. But they stopped ajar. The Martians would leave a narrow opening so they could hear and record his pain-sounds.

The ceiling pressed down. He was flat on his back and trying not to cry out in fear. In a minute or so, he would feel the vise-grip. The dead Martian, who was not under the vent, was already caught in it. He could hear the popping sounds she made, and the damp hiss when her air-sac ruptured. Pressed like a flower in a book.

THE LOUVERS touched him lightly. He called into the vent to keep from screaming.

"I tell you the government sent me to bargain!"

"That is an untrue statement. We have refused such offers. You spoke an untrue statement."

The pressure was robbing him of breath. "Not as untrue as the damn lies your lecturer tells."

There was a long silence.

"Would you repeat that, please?"

He repeated it as best he could.

There was another silence, during which the pressure stopped increasing.

"Would you please explain your meaning?" the loudspeaker asked coldly. "And give the origin of such a belief."

Jerry stalled for a few more minutes of life. "You're no more sexless than earthmen. Your broadcasts were lies."

"What is the origin of such a belief?"

"Barney told us before he died. It's going to be common knowledge."

The Martians were apparently slow thinkers. Slow but accurate. Soon they would remember the dead female under the dome.

"That is an untrue statement. The scout's memory was sifted before he was released."

The pressure began to increase again.

"He saw something you didn't know he saw!" Jerry shrieked.

Gradually the pressure stopped again. A long silence. Apparently they were mulling it over. He waited. Then—

Thunk, thunk... from out of the vent.

The blast rocked his senses. He squirmed helplessly and moaned. His skull was bursting.

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK THUNK...

He shrank and cringed under the sledge-hammer shocks. They seemed to explode inside his head. They came faster.

TUK TUK TUK TUK TUK...

Gratefully he surrendered himself to the tide of blackness.

HE AWOKE in a dim room. His skin was brittle. His mouth was numb with dryness. The ceiling was absurdly low—but high enough for Martian stature. He was obviously inside the dome.

He moved. Pain stabbed a thousand needles in him. He was bound with thread-thin barbed wire. The movement caused the tiny pinpoints to bite his flesh. He moved again, and moaned.

"Do not stir," said a voice. "The wire is coated with an irritant. Motion will cause sufficient pain to result in fainting."

Jerry carefully turned his head to see the source of the voice. It came from his walkie-talkie! It was on a low table. A Martian female stood nearby. It was like watching a ventriloquist.

"Your statement was untrue," the Martian went on. "The scout told nothing. You simply examined the dead Yy-Da beneath the vent. The scout died before speaking to another Earthman."

"What makes you think so?"

"We have questioned another captive."

Jerry watched the female warily. She seemed to feel no anger or sorrow for her dead compatriot. Her insect-like eyes gazed at him blankly as she crouched in the queer Martian stance. The red welt down the center of her body made her look cleft by a sword.

"Who is the captive?" he asked.

"It is the Earth female. It is the female of the scout. It is—"

"Good Lord! Betty!"

"That is a true statement."

He lurched toward the Martian in a rage. She listened calmly to his howl of pain and watched him stiffen into immobility as the snake-fangs of the wire pierced his body. He sickened with shock. The wires were worse than a black swarm of angry wasps.

"That was an illogical action."

He wished fervently that they would keep their analyses of his behaviour to themselves.

"What are you going to do with her?" he groaned.

"We need parts of the human organism as models." She paused, then said, "This is an ineffective and illogical procedure. You will remember nothing of what I tell you. Therefore it is a waste of time for you to ask."

He tested the wires again and winced. He could break them—but perhaps have an immediate convulsion. The Martians evidently had a great respect for pain. They didn't expect him to try. Maybe he'd faint, but when the time came...

She saw him examining his bonds. "The irritant is also a debilitating agent," she said. "If you continue stirring, you will become too weak to move. That would be illogical."

His mouth was cottony. "Can I have water?" he asked.

She hesitated for a moment, then shuffled silently out of the room. Cautiously he tried to slip out of his loosely wrapped bonds. But the wires adhered to his skin like tape. Soon he was in agony. It was no use. He felt sure a sudden muscular surge would burst them, but it was too early to try it. He had no plan. No way to escape.

THE MARTIAN was gone a long time. He stared at the walkie-talkie. Betty had probably found it and picked it up before they caught her. Maybe she'd used it to call for help—not that it would do any good.

The Martian shuffled back with a ping-pong ball full of dirty fluid. A flexible tube was attached. She held it away from her distastefully and kept the tube pinched closed. He remembered that Martians took a drink about once a month. Moisture made them itch, except when their systems required the tiny periodic amount.

He took the water in a quick suck. It furred his teeth. Full of iron— probably Martian water. A ten-year supply would be a light load for such a small consumption. When their skins became numb, they knew they were thirsty—the lecturer said. They drank a small amount, scratched happily, then were disgusted with themselves and let it alone for another month.

"I need water," he said. "A whole bucket of it."

She thought about it for a moment. "It will be necessary to take you to the water. There is no large closed container available."

She was afraid of even the nearness of water. Apparently the slight evaporation caused itching.

She loosened the wires that bound his legs by painting his skin with a clear oil that caused them to pull away easily and painlessly. He watched for an opportunity to kick at her brain-case. He spoke to distract her.

"What's in store for me here, Gertrude?"

"We wish to trace out the synaptic connections which deal with rage, lust, and hate in the human organism."

"I don't get it."

"Certain areas of your cortex will be paralyzed. Then you will be offered various stimuli and your behaviour observed. We will find the areas which affect these emotions which we do not possess."

He tentatively aimed a foot at the center of her abdomen. "What sort of stimuli?"

"The ones which normally evoke rage, lust, or fear, respectively. It will require considerable time. Your brain will gradually be destroyed."

He held the foot back for a moment. "Lust?..."

"You forget that we have one of your females. You will be closed together in a room. The logical functioning of your brain will be paralyzed..."

He lashed out with his foot. She caught it in her claws and forced it to the floor easily. There was strength in the thin Martian arms.

"Such behaviour will result in continued thirst," she warned calmly.

He subsided. She wrapped wire around his neck and fastened it to his knees, so that he would have to walk hunched over and take mincing steps. She produced a small device that looked like a camera, pointed it at the drinking container on the table, and snapped a lever. The ping-pong ball exploded into a fine powder, and a low thump filled the room. It was a convincing reminder of the bludgeoning he had received beneath the dome. "You will walk ahead," she announced, and lifted the radio from the table.

THEY STEPPED into the corridor. An occasional expressionless Martian passed as they moved along. Jerry managed to crane his neck to get a glimpse of each—all females. Maybe the women were the workers.

"After you drink, you will be put to sleep until you are needed," his guard told him. "You will be spared any pain that is not necessary to our work."

"That's good of you, Gertrude."

"Thank you."

He snapped a curse at her, and expected a thump from the device she carried. But she showed no anger.

They entered a huge circular room with a bulging ceiling. The top of the dome, perhaps. He looked around as best he could. Machinery. Heavy, complicated machinery of massive design. The room smelled of the strange foul odor that sometimes blew toward the town. Some of the machinery was lead shielded. Ductwork led from it to the ceiling. The ducts were yellow helices that glowed with a faint corona discharge. Some sort of wave-guides, perhaps. They all passed through the jaws of a tremendous electro-magnet before they spiralled upward. Near the ceiling they straightened, and each duct flared out into a flat sort of reflector, focused upward. He tried to trace the ductwork back to its origin.

"You will move faster, please," said the radio speaker. "And keep looking at the floor."

The Martian didn't want him to inspect the machinery. The ducts with the hovering corona—did they supply the field to the outer shell of the dome? And if the field were suddenly destroyed...

He stole another glance toward the electromagnet.

Thunk! The Martian gave him a light jolt with the sonic gun. It staggered him. The wires needled him painfully.

"Look at the floor, please."

He looked at the floor and walked in the direction she indicated. He had seen what he wanted to see. The ducts all ended in a spherical shell surrounded with gold-colored tubing.

They passed into another corridor. Still he had seen no Martians but females. As they moved along they passed a flanking wall of glass-partitioned cells. A few of the cells were occupied by pink sleepers in various stages of division. He found the sight revolting.

"Where's all the men, Gertrude?" he asked suddenly.

He got another throb from the gun. Just enough to make him wince. He bit his lip with rage.

"You will ask no more questions," said the female.

Two things he wasn't supposed to know about—the machinery and Martian sex. Two weaknesses of some sort?

THEY MOVED onto a narrow catwalk and approached a large cylindrical tank. The tank was on stilts above some kind of rotating machinery below the catwalk. Pipes ran downward from it. He could feel hot currents of air arising from the machinery. Apparently the tank contained either condensate or cooling-liquid. The frame of the machinery glowed a dull red.

"Here is the water. You will drink now."

She found a flexible hose with a valve, then loosened the wires about his neck and held the hose to his mouth. She kept the gun on his belly and one hand on the valve. She didn't want any of the irritating fluid to spill. The water was hot, but he drank greedily of it. When his thirst was satisfied, he filled his cheeks with it. Then he nodded that he was finished. She cut off the valve.

"We will go now," she said as she replaced the hose.

Now or never! He spurted the mouthful of water at her. It drenched her gritty skin. She cringed. The thump-gun punched, and the sonic blast spun him sideways. The radio shrieked gibberish. She clawed at herself and dropped the gun.

He struggled against the wires. They burst. The sudden pain was maddening. He screamed and fell. Nausea caught him. Vertigo. To faint was to die. He lurched about on his hands and knees, tearing at the adhesive wires. They came loose from his back like the ripping off of his own skin.

He found the thump-gun and pawed at it weakly. Gertrude was doing spidery contortions on the floor.

He aimed at the tank and fired the gun. Not even a dent. There was a dial-setting on the weapon. He twisted it to the extreme and fired again. The recoil hurt his wrists and sent him off balance. This time there was a dent in the cylinder. He kept on firing, and the dent grew deeper.

Quick shuffling steps were ringing on the catwalk behind him. Martians! He continued concentrating on the dent. It grew deeper. The metal gave way and a thin jet of dirty water spurted out.

The fringe of a sonic blast caught him from the rear and sent him on his face, half-conscious. But he heard the spitting hiss of the water-jet as it struck the red-hot furnace. Billowing clouds of steam rolled over him. He glanced weakly around to see the Martians beating a terrified retreat before the advancing vapor.

He lay gaining strength for a moment. The first skirmish was won. Now to find Betty.

Gertrude was in a twitching coma. Perhaps she would die if her crystalline hide became saturated. He needed her help. He strapped on the walkie-talkie.

He caught her two-toed foot and dragged her along the catwalk. The steam was rolling along the walls and floor. He turned a corner and came to a glass door with a guard post beside it. The guard had suddenly left for a dryer climate. Beyond the door was a tiny cubicle with a smaller door in the opposite wall. The guard post suggested a prison cell. He dragged the limp Martian into the cubicle.

The smaller door was locked. He pressed a button in its center. A motor whined. He felt a sudden draft. The cubicle was an airlock. His ears crackled with the changing pressure. In a few moments he was gasping for breath. But the door to the corridor had locked automatically. He was trapped.

Suddenly the draft died out. The motor groaned to a stop. Then the small door slid slowly open.

HE STARED into a large, weirdly-lit room. The walls were rust-red panoramas of Martian scenery. Light came from orbs suspended from a black ceiling—the moons of Mars. A blue gray dawn-light was reaching up behind a range of hills. It was like a visit to the fourth planet. Even the thin, dry atmosphere was duplicated. He was choking for breath.

But the female was reviving quickly. He dragged her into the large room. Then he saw its occupant. Another Martian lay asleep on a satin couch in the center of the room. Asleep, but not dividing.

He kicked the quaking female. She stopped squirming and gazed at him without anger. For an instant he felt remorse. Her even stare was like turning the other cheek; she couldn't get mad. Then he remembered that Martians could feel no pity either. He kicked her again. She showed fear.

"Where is Betty?" he demanded.

Her blank stare was a direct refusal. He shifted the gun to low and gave her brain-case several quick twinges. The radio crackled with static.

"She'll be dead before you reach her," said the Martian.

"Then I'll kill you now," he snapped.

She was afraid for herself, but she was also afraid for her race, apparently. She remained silent. He set the gun to medium and jolted her in the belly. She doubled with pain.

The sleeping Martian was stirring. Jerry turned the gun toward the couch.

"No! Do not shoot the male!" The burst came loudly from the radio.

The male? He backed to a position where he could cover them both and stared at the rousing sleeper. The male was thin and weak. The crystalline coating had worn away in spots, leaving smooth places on his wrinkled hide. He was old. And there was no red welt down his middle.

"Tell me where Betty is!"

"She will be dead before you reach her."

"Then I'll kill you both. Uncle Fidgety first."

He aimed the gun at the tottering male, who stood staring stupidly at him, as if unaware of what was happening.

"No! I will tell you where to find her!" the female called quickly. "Do not kill the male."

SHE CLIMBED anxiously erect and placed herself between Jerry and the old one.

"That's better!" he snapped. "Call the others. Tell them to bring her here. And no tricks. Stay on this frequency and use earth-language."

"They cannot come here," she said. "They cannot endure the moisture in the corridors. They will be crowding in the drying rooms. If the skin becomes moisture-clogged, they die of suffocation. We take in oxygen through our skins. Our air-sacs are for hydrogen feeding."

"I don't give a damn if they die or not. Do what I say."

"There is a more logical way," she said. "The male has two suits of moisture-proof plastic for his personal use. I will wear one of these and take you to the girl."

"And be led into a trap? No, thanks. Tell your cronies to direct her to the central power room. Where the field generators are."

It was a stab in the dark, but it struck home. She straightened and emitted a surprised crackle of static.

He laughed. "So they are field generators!"

She was silent.

"Call the others!" he ordered.

He was beginning to totter in the rarefied air. The female was watching him closely for signs of weakness, and she was stalling for time. He gave her a thump, but missed. She edged toward him. Swaying and gasping he turned the gun toward the male.

"I will call the others," she said quickly.

She went into a deeper crouch and seemed to be straining inwardly. The radio was suddenly blocking, and feedback whined in the audio stage. Her output was reaching out to the others. He turned down the volume and listened.

"...man-organism threatens to destroy male. Do not molest Earth female. Free her at once and direct her to central control. Man-organism threatens to destroy cherished male."

"And tell her I'll be there," Jerry snapped.

She relayed the information, while he tried to breathe.

"All right," he snapped. "Let's go to central control—both of you!" His heart was pounding. Bright specks in his eyes.

Static crackled again. "It is not necessary to take the male," she protested. "Why do you take..."

"He makes a good hostage, dearie. Let's go."

She found the moisture-proof suits and began helping the male into one of them. Jerry's breath was failing. He thumped them lightly. The male cringed.

"Put 'em on—in the airlock," Jerry gasped.

They moved into the small room. He jabbed at the button and his mind went black for a moment. But the female was taking no chances. The pumps whined, and after a few moments Jerry was sucking in the good moist air of the corridor. The male was scratching and dancing feebly as he scrambled into his suit.

"It'd be hell if you got caught in the rain," Jerry snapped disgustedly.

The female took him seriously. "We have prevented it from raining here," she said coldly. "Eventually we shall stop all precipitation on your planet. The water will stay in the seas, and our people will live in comfort."

Rage gripped him again. He sent her sprawling with a sonic blast. She shook herself, and climbed slowly erect.

"Let's start moving," he snarled.

"You will never escape alive," she said as she moved ahead of him. "The moisture is passing."

IT WAS true. The steam had condensed on the walls and was already evaporating again as the air-dryers worked furiously. As they passed the water tank, he noticed that the leakage had drained its contents to the level of the hole and had stopped. Soon the Martians would be coming out of the drying rooms in full strength—with more potent weapons than sonic guns.

So they wanted to borrow the earth and make it a desert! Keep the water in the seas. Make the land like arid Mars. Jerry thought about the field-strengthened skin of the dome. To release the field? A wine glass dropped in molten steel. And destruction to all within, perhaps?

And destruction to Betty and himself. He was no hero.

The thin male staggered feebly beside the female. She led him by the arm. Jerry wondered if all the Martian males were like that—or perhaps he was a senile king or priest. There seemed to be an acute scarcity of males.

Betty was standing alone in the power-room when they hurried in. She was glancing nervously about at the machinery which dwarfed her tiny figure and towered over her. She saw them enter, and hurried toward Jerry with frightened eyes. She was dark and pretty in her jeans and riding boots. And she was unharmed—except for the red welts about her arms from the adhesive wires. He murmured thankfully.

He wanted to hug her—and then he saw that she had something like that in mind. So he glared at her. She was Barney's widow.

"Why the hell did you come out here?" he bawled at her.

She stopped and looked hurt. "I thought I could stop you. I thought you came out here because I said—"

"Never mind!" he snapped. "Let's get out of it!"

"Wait, Jerry!" she said excitedly. "I found out what they're going to do. They're going to conquer the Earth and dry up the—"

"I know it. Let's go."

"But can't we do something?"

He hesitated. "Listen, I'll get you outside, and then I'll come back..."

There was a distinct murmur of pleasure from the loud-speaker. He glanced at the Martian female.

"You like the idea, do you, Gertrude?"

The Martian was silent.

"There isn't time, Jerry," Betty said. "And I'm sticking with you. Can't we wreck some of this stuff?"

"We'd be sacrificing..."

HE DIDN'T finish. Three Martians sped into the power room and ducked behind a generator. Their pink bodies were dusted with white—an absorbent powder, perhaps. A transparent globule sailed over the generator and burst at their feet. A white vapor floated up from it. The female scurried away from it and dragged the male behind her.

"Hold your breath!" he snapped at Betty. They ran after the Martian hostages, and he snapped a sonic throb at them.

They stopped and looked back at the white vapor. It suddenly flared into a flash of greenish flame and disappeared.

"An anaesthetic," he said to Betty. "They won't hurt the male."

The room was suddenly thronging with Martians. They sent a flanking movement along the outer wall, and Jerry fired rapid thumps at the scurrying little bodies as they leaped across the open stretches.

"This way!" he called, and led Betty toward the golden sphere with its radial ducts. "That mess of yellow pipe. It's the key to the dome."

He no longer had time for the female hostage, but he dragged the male behind him. The female set up a howl on the radio and followed at a safe distance.

"Call off the hounds, Gertrude," he shouted at her. "Or I'll punch holes in your ductwork."

"That would be an illogical action," said the radio in his hand. "The whole dome would collapse. You and the Earth-female would be destroyed."

Betty gripped his arm tightly as they ran. "Do it, Jerry," she panted. "Do it and don't worry. It's worth it."

"Feel like dying, honey?" he asked her weakly.

They came to the base of the sphere and pulled the wilting male between them. A circle of pink bodies was slowly closing in from all sides. Jerry kept firing, but none of his blasts were lethal. Martians fell and arose again. Evidently the power of the sonic weapon needed replenishing. There was little choice. Either waste the last of its energy on the attackers, or fire at the ducts.

"Do it, Jerry," she begged. "It's our only chance. It's Earth's only chance, anyway."

He had moved away from the sphere to look up at the ducts. Suddenly a thump-gun blast caught him below the hips and sent him careening to the floor. He tried to get up, but his leg wobbled sideways and bent between is knee and ankle. Broken! Martians were rushing in for the kill. He fell back in pain and stabbed a sonic blast at a stretch of duct above him. It dented the metal. A shock-wave rocked the dome. A pulse of high-pitched sound pierced the control room.

The Martians had halted.

"Do not fire again," blared the radio. "Your rage destroys yourself. That is illogical. Do not shoot."

"Stay back, then," he warned.

"Shoot, Jerry, shoot!" Betty was screaming. "Don't wait."

HE GRINNED at her weakly. He was no Samson—to pull the temple down on his own head. But if he had to do it...

"Come here, Gertrude," he snarled at the Martian female, and kept the gun pointed at the duct.

She obeyed quickly. "Do not shoot. That would be illogical."

"Turn your output down to a whisper."

She obeyed. "Do not fire again at the duct."

"Then get us out of here. We'll take the male as a hostage."

"No. That would be unsatisfactory."

He snorted his contempt. "Is one sorry male worth more to you than the whole works?"

"He is the only male," she said. "You will not take the male."

The only male! So that's why Martian sex was a weakness. If anything happened to the male...

"The only male of your whole race?" he asked.

"There are two others on our planet. Both are as old as this one. There was a great plague. And no male has been born of a separation since that time. The plague attacks the male during division. We find that the plague virus cannot exist on earth."

"So you decided to move in on us and take over."

"That is our intention."

"Blast the ductwork, Jerry!" Betty was begging. "They keep moving closer."

He glanced around at the circle of Martians. They were edging nearer and nearer.

He grinned at Betty. "Bring the male over here," he called to her. "And don't ask questions."

She obeyed, and the old Martian followed her tug without protest. He seemed not to understand what was happening.

"You won't lead us out of here? With the male as a hostage?" he asked the female.

"We will not, Earthman." She made a sudden move toward him.

He blasted her, and she sat down weakly. But the gun had been turned to full strength. It should have crushed her.

"Now there is not enough energy in the device to puncture the field-guides," she said triumphantly.

The Martians began to close in again. He didn't like the thing he was about to do, because he knew what pity was. But he also knew the smell of a cornfield in the rain, and the gurgle of a happy baby, and the look on Betty's face when she married Barney—and all the other things of earth that tie a man down to his race and his kin and his great-green planet.

He shot the Martian male in the belly. He doubled up weakly and crumpled. Jerry dragged the quivering old beast to his side.

The radio was raging and Betty was wrestling with the female. The others were plunging swiftly toward him.

He pressed the sonic gun against the male's brain-case and fired again. The creature lay still. He kept firing until clawed hands seized him roughly and pulled him away. He felt the shattering pain of his fracture compounding as they dragged him across the floor. He moaned and grew faint.

WHEN HE was fully conscious again, Betty was bending over him and holding his head.

"Why don't they kill us?" she asked.

He glanced toward the dead male. A quivering, pulsating, excited circle of Martian females was gathered about his body.

"Why don't you run while you can?" he asked her in return.

"And leave you here?" She shook her head.

He chuckled. "That's what I wanted to know. Don't worry. They won't bother us now. They can't feel anger or rage. And we're no good to them as specimens anymore, because their mission's a failure. They'll die if they don't go back to Mars."

"Why?"

"Well, why did they bring a male with them on a dangerous mission in the first place? Not to build up numbers: this was a preparatory mission. They could have brought the males later. But the male is undoubtedly very necessary to them."

He reached for one of the sonic guns dropped by the panicky females. "Come here, Gertrude," he called.

She broke away from the mourning circle and approached them slowly as if in a daze.

"What happens to a Martain female if she isn't fertilized?" he asked.

"When it is time to divide, she will go to sleep," she answered dully. "But in dividing, she will die."

"Next question. When are you leaving?"

"Immediately."

He waved the gun in the general direction of the yellow helices. "Of course you'll call our men and inform them. And have someone come pick us up."

She kept her eyes on the gun. "You are useless to us now. We cannot risk another male on this planet. We cannot return. We have no need for you. We shall release you."

He grinned at Betty. "Well, baby. Are we even now? Here's a couple of hundred widows to your one."

She looked away sadly but not angrily. "It was Earth I was thinking about, Jerry. Not just Barney."

"Sure, I know. Everybody was thinking about Earth. But nobody was really down-deep mad. It takes a big mad to win a fight. And Martians just can't get mad."

HE WAS in bed with a plaster cast when the dome blasted off. They watched its bright yellow streak taper up into the night sky—and disappear into the clouds. Too bad they couldn't see the faint red eye of Mars.

"Why were they mutilating people, Jerry?" she asked as she stared out the window.

"I asked Gertrude about that. They were trying to find out why Earth-men are immune to their plague virus."

He paused and decided he'd better tell her a lie.

"They're good biologists," he went on. "They wanted to synthesize a living Martian female on the mamalian principle. They can build robot animals like that. They wanted to see if she'd be immune to the plague."

Jerry wondered how she'd react if he told her the truth. That it wasn't going to be a Martian female—but an Earth female, furnished with Martian genes. That in very fact—it was going to be Betty. She wouldn't like the idea of mothering a lot of little Martian boys—she wouldn't like it even in the retrospect world of possibilities bypassed.

She was still gazing out the window. "I feel sorry for them, Jerry— in a way."

He watched her silently.

"Millions of women—and just two men," she murmured.

"See what could happen?" he said. "If you stay in mourning too long? And a plague descends? How'd you like to share a husband with that many."

She stood up quickly and reddened. "I'm going now, Jerry," she said nervously. "I'm going away and be— well—anyway, don't try to see me..."

She moved toward the door, paused, and looked back. "...for a couple of months, anyway." She hurried out quickly. The back of her neck was bright pink.

He settled back with a grin and listened to the sound of the rain that was beginning to fall outside. Two months? The dry, dry desert had waited ten long years.

THE END