in his heart he suspected that fierce human persistence couldn't be
stopped--_as long as there were humans left_. Mitch and his star folk
couldn't withdraw from the mainstream of competition--inherent in
life--that was spreading again across the solar system. They could only
stand their ground, take their fearful chances, be part of it.

One of the last things Mitch said, was, "Got any cigarettes, Frank?
Selma likes one, once in a while."

"Sure. Three packs here inside my Archer. Mighty small hospitality gift,
Mitch..."

After the 'copter drifted away, it seemed that a curtain drew over
Nelsen's mind, blurring the whole memory. It was as though _they_ had
planned that. It was almost as though Mitch, and Selma, as he had just
seen them, were just another mind-fantasy of the Heebie-Jeebie Planet,
created by its present masters.

"Should we believe it?" Nance whispered.

"My cigarettes are gone," Frank told her.

At the Survey Station they got weary looks from Ed Huth. "I guess I
picked a wrong man, Nelsen," he said.

"It looks as though you did, Ed," Frank replied. "I'm really sorry."

They got worse hell from a little doctor from Italy, whose name was
Padetti. They were asked a lot of questions. They fibbed some, but not
entirely.

"We sort of blanked out, Doctor," Nance told him. "I suppose we spent
most of our time in the desert, living in our Archers. There were the
usual distorted hallucinations of Syrtis Fever. A new strain, I
suspect... Four months gone? Oh, no...!"

She must have had a time evading his questions for the next month, while
she worked, again, in the lab. Maybe he did divine half of the truth, at
last. Maybe he even was sympathetic toward the thickets that he was
trying to defeat.

Nelsen wasn't allowed to touch another helicopter. During that month,
between brief but violent seizures of the fever, he was employed as a
maintenance mechanic.

Then the news came. There had been an emergency call from Pallastown.
Rescue units were to be organized, and rocketed out in high-velocity
U.N.S.F. and U.S.S.F bubbs. There had been sabotage, violence. The Town
was three-quarters gone, above the surface. Planned attack or--almost
worse--merely the senseless result of space-poisoned men kicking off the
lid in a spree of hell-raising humor and fun?

Nelsen was bitter. But he also felt the primitive excitement--almost an
eagerness. That was the savage paradox in life.

"You still have the dregs of