"The radio makes no difference to me," the boy said. "I'm going to die. In a very few minutes. I can feel it crawling up in me. But I'll die knowing you aren't going to get what you were after, Hurtz, any more that I did. I was good, damn you. I was a damned good pilot. I had it all in front of me, and you had to ruin it. But you aren't going to get anything now. Your land, Hurtz? Your stupid land. How about that? Who'll be sitting on that when you don't get back?" "I feel sorry for you." "Oh, that's good of you, Hurtz. You feel sorry for me while you spend the rest of your life stuck on this damned planet, will you? I enjoy the thought of that." "I won't be here long," Hurtz bluffed. "Oh, no?" the boy said, as more blood ran down his chin. "A planet half the size of Venus? No way to send them your position? You think they're going to send out a fleet to look for you over every inch of this globe? They couldn't find you in forty years." Hurtz stood silent, his eyes thin as he watched the boy with the bleeding and smiling mouth. "I only wanted one thing, Jones. Just that one thing." "That's right," the boy grinned. "Just that one thing, that section on Mars. Only now you aren't going to get it. You've got a one-track obsession, Hurtz, like a simple damned child, even though you've flown the universe for twenty years. This'll kill you, and you have my deepest regrets. Here," he said, sending the pistol spinning across the floor so that it stopped beside Hurtz's boots. "There's a round left in it. I saved it. Just for you." The boy began to laugh then, a kind of building laughter, that turned into choking. He put one hand to his throat and then rolled over suddenly, so that his eyes stared at the ceiling. Hurtz looked at the dead boy for a long time, then he tapped the pistol very lightly with a toe of a boot. Finally he stepped to the broken radio and ran his fingers carefully over the useless equipment. When he crawled from the cabin of the rocket to the ground, his movements were automatic. On the ground, he stood, very quietly, his back against the ship, watching the tree leaves flutter faintly with the breeze. The words of the boy were still in his brain, and he could still see the very clean-cut, very young, very dead face. So many times he'd thought of Jones as he had been himself, twenty years ago. It was almost as though he'd died up there himself. Worse, was the realization that what the boy had told him was right. Somehow, this was all his own fault. With his age and knowledge and experience, he'd taken the confidence out of the boy. The fears, the distrust, during the whole trip, had been communicated to Jones and so this was the result.