Space Station 1

“I’m simply stressing that Mars is simply not a place for a kid of Freddy’s age. When he goes roaming he gets his lungs choked with dust. He couldn’t ride a bike on Mars — if he had a bike. Worst of all, he has no kids of his own age to play with. And now he comes on a trip like this. Does he hope to rescue the Ramsey girl all by himself?”

Corriston got up then. The three men who had been discussing Dr. Drever’s son stood by the smoldering embers of a burnt out campfire. They were kindly looking men but a certain narrow-mindedness was stamped on the faces of at least two of them.

Corriston shrugged off his weariness and walked up to them# “Nonsense!” he said.

A startled look came into the eyes of the oldest, a grizzled scarecrow of a man whose beard descended almost to his waist. He was a Martian geologist, and a good one.

“Eh, Lieutenant. I was just going to ask you. Shouldn’t we get started?”

“We should and we will,” Corriston said.- “But a good many men collapsed from the cold this morning. If we don’t arrive at that ship in force, we may live to regret it. Where’s Freddy? Have you seen him?”

The grizzled man raised his arm and pointed: “Over there,” he said. “His coming along was just about the craziest thing I ever heard of.”

Corriston walked across the churned up sand to where

Freddy sat perched like a disconsolate gnome on a metal- rimmed food container shaped like an old-fashioned water barrel.

Dr. Drever’s son was almost twelve, but he was small for his age and Corriston had seen boys of nine who were much huskier looking.

Corriston had no way of knowing that on Earth, shoulder to shoulder with other schoolboys, Freddy had never thought of himself as particularly small. It was only on Mars, all alone with his father and other grownups, that he had felt even smaller than he actually was. He had felt like a dwarf child.

“Why did you do it, Freddy?” Corriston asked. “Your father is very upset and worried.”

Freddy looked up quickly and just as quickly lowered his eyes again.

“I had to come,” he said. “I had to.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know.”

“I see.”

Corriston stared at him for a long moment in silence. Then he said: “I think perhaps I understand, Freddy. Just suppose we say you succumbed to an impulse to roam. The exploring urge can be overwhelming in a boy of your age. It usually is. If you were on Earth right now you’d be dreaming about exploring the headwaters of the Amazon. You’d be dreaming about birds with bright, tropical plumage and butterflies as big as dinner plates.”

Freddy looked up again, not quite so quickly this time. There was wonder and admiration in his stare. “How did you know?” he gasped.

“I guess I was pretty much like you, Freddy — once,” Corriston said.

“Gee, thanks,” Freddy said.

“Thanks for what?”

“Thanks for understanding me, Lieutenant Corriston.”

Corriston walked out between the tractors and raised

his voice so that everyone within earshot could hear him.

“We’re starting again in ten minutes,” he said. “Better have another cup of coffee all around.”

20

THE SAND had been blowing for forty minutes. It was a flying avalanche, a flailing mace. Even inside the tractors it set up an almost intolerable roaring in the eardrums, and when it struck the wind-guards head on the battered vehicles shook. For five or six seconds they would rumble on and then come to a jolting halt. Often they would start up again almost immediately but equally often they would remain stalled for several minutes, and at times there were more stalled tractors than moving ones across the entire line of advance.

The pelting never ceased, never let up even for a moment. Minute after minute the sand came sweeping down in red fury, tons upon tons of it, in great circular waves from high overhead and in jet velocity flurries close to the ground. In that assault of billions upon billions of spinning particles the brightly colored lichens which covered the Martian plains were uprooted, lifted high in the air, and carried for dozens of miles, flying carpets so small they scarcely could have supported the tiniest of elves.

For three hours the sandstorm continued to rage in fury, and then, abruptly, the wind died down, the last flurry subsided, and the colonists got under way again. And just for a change a few of them descended from the tractors and advanced on foot, keeping a little ahead of the swaying vehicles.

Dr. Drever, a tall, stooped man with graying temples but surprisingly youthful eyes accelerated his stride a little and fell in with the scarecrow geologist who was walking at Corriston’s side.

“We can’t be far from the ship now,” he said. “I wish there was some way I could send Freddy back. If I thought you could spare a tractor and one man to accompany him . .

“Freddy will be all right.” Corriston said. “You don’t know what it means to a kid like Freddy to ride through a sandstorm in the company of grownups. He had to prove something to himself, and I think he’s done it.”