, there was no animal life
on the red planet. Now look at it. Same thing was true when Breslauer
first settled Pluto. The colonies there got along. I tell you Norris has
got something up his sleeve, and I don't like it."

Later, after Mason had taken his negative surveyor reading, the flame of
trouble reached the end of its fuse!

Norris had given orders to return to the _Marie Galante_, and the rest
of us were sullenly making ready to start the back trail. Mason,
however, deliberately seized his pick and began chopping a hole in the
rock surface, preparatory apparently to erecting his plastic tent.

"We'll make temporary camp here," he said calmly. "Brandt, you can go
back to the ship and bring back the rest of the women." He turned and
smiled sardonically at Navigator Norris.

Norris quietly knocked the ashes from his pipe and placed it in his
pocket. He strode forward, took the pick from Mason's hands and flung it
away. Then he seized Mason by the coat, whipped him around and drove his
fist hard against the younger man's jaw.

"When you signed on for this voyage, you agreed to obey my orders," he
said, not raising his voice. "You'll do just that."

Mason picked himself up, and there was an ugly glint in his eyes. He
could have smashed Norris to a pulp, and none knew it better than the
Navigator. For a brief instant the younger man swayed there on the balls
of his feet, fists clenched. Then he let his hands drop, walked over and
began to put on his packsack.

But I had seen Mason's face, and I knew he had not given in as easily as
it appeared. Meanwhile he began to circulate among the passengers,
making no offers, yet subtly enlisting backers for a policy, the
significance of which grew on me slowly. It was mutiny he was plotting!
And with his personal charm and magnetism he had little trouble in
winning over converts. I came upon him arguing before a group of the
women one day, among them his own wife, Estelle. He was standing close
to her.

"We have clothing and equipment and food concentrate," Mason said.
"Enough to last two generations. We have brains and intelligence, and we
certainly should be able to establish ourselves without the aid of other
vertebrate forms of life.

"Coulora, Jama, Tenethon, Mokrell, R-9, and Stragella. We could have
settled on any one of those planets, and apparently we should have, for
conditions have grown steadily worse at each landing. But always the
answer is no. Why? Beca