He said, "I wonder if there's something connecting THE CALL with the stars? Something out of Space. Maybe there's something real about THE CALL." She jumped up, leaned over him. Her eyes seemed hard now and distant. "Darling. Why the devil don't you go up there among the Stars and find out for yourself?" He sat there staring at her, scarcely seeing her. At the moment, he didn't think about it logically. But the suggestion hit him hard and deep and he knew then, though he didn't think about it anymore that night, that that was exactly what he would try to do. He didn't see Marie again, but once. At that time she was hanging on the crooked elbow of one of the other few million. It didn't really matter who. A big blond lad with a constant glittering smile. A Good Joe who would always be having a good time, and who never never would ask any questions. There was a slight tinge of jealousy for a moment, and when that passed he didn't seem to care much at all. It was the System that made everybody seem so much like everyone else so that it became so difficult to see anything special in a lover. Everything was for convenience, strictly, and any irritation was an unnecessary unpleasantness that seldom occurred. Curiosity was irritating in the New System. A person who got THE CALL was so irritating he was eliminated. They would find out sooner or later about him, and then they would kill him. So he volunteered for duty on an Earth-Venus cargo three-man rocket. He had nothing to lose but his life in attempting to grab the rocket and take it to Mars. And almost any other imaginable way of losing it would be preferable to being taken into the little white room--knowing what to expect instead of Paradise. * * * * * Bronson stopped talking. Morrow leaned forward. "What do you expect to find on Mars?" "What? But--you mean you'll let me--?" Morrow nodded slowly. "Maybe. I've been curious too at times. We have that much in common. Maybe the new blood has been conditioned more thoroughly than I have, but I've been in a long time, and I get bored with routine. Now here's a situation that is stimulating, and I say to myself, why not exploit it? However, I've never gotten THE CALL, and that puts up a wall between us. Otherwise, I feel a certain rapport." "Well, are you making a deal or something?" "Yes, you might say, a kind of deal. Curious, this idea of yours that THE CALL comes from Mars, added to the fact that it's forbidden to go to Mars. In the period immediately following the beginning of the New System, I understand a few rockets went to Mars. None of them ever came back. No one ever heard of them again."