y, Aunt Twylee."

The little girl watched the old Martian as she lit the oven and gathered
the necessary ingredients for the cobbler. As she bent over to get a
bowl from the shelf beneath Marilou's perch, her hair brushed against
the child's knee. Her hair was soft, soft and white as a puppy's, soft
and white like the down from a dandelion. She smiled at Marilou. She
always smiled; her pencil-thin mouth was a perpetual arc.

Marilou drained the glass. "Aunt Twylee--is it true what my daddy says
about the Martians?"

"True? How can I say, dear? I don't know what he said."

"Well, I mean, that when us Earth people came, you Martians did inf ...
infan ..."

"Infanticide?" Aunt Twylee interrupted, rolling the dough on the board a
little flatter, a little faster.

"Yes, that's it--killed babies," Marilou said, and took an apple from
the bowl. "My daddy says you were real primitive, an' killed your babies
for some silly religious reason. I think that's awful! How could it be
religious? God couldn't like to have little babies killed!" She took a
big bite of the apple; the juice ran from the corners of her mouth.

"Your daddy is a very intelligent man, Marilou, but he's partially
wrong. It is true--but not for religious reasons. It was a necessity.
You must remember, dear, Mars is very arid--sterile--unable to sustain
many living things. It _was_ awful, but it was the only way we knew to
control the population."

* * * * *

Marilou looked down her button nose as she picked a brown spot from the
apple. "Hmmph, I'll tell 'im he's wrong," she said. "He thinks he knows
so damn much!"

"Marilou!" Aunt Twylee exclaimed as she looked over her glasses. "A
sweet child like you shouldn't use such language!"

Marilou giggled and popped the remaining portion of the apple in her
mouth.

"Do your parents know where you are, child?" Aunt Twylee asked, as she
took the bowl from Marilou's hands. She began dicing the apples into a
dough-lined casserole.

"No, they don't," Marilou replied. She sprayed the air with little
particles of apple as she talked. "Everybody's gone to the hills to look
for the boys."

"The boys?" Aunt Twylee stopped her work and looked at the little girl.

"Yes--Jimmy an' Eddie an' some of the others disappeared from the
settlement this morning. The men're afraid they've run off to th' hills
an' the renegades got 'em."

"Gracious," Aunt Twylee said; her brow knitted into