The old reduction plant huddled in a wide, shallow depression made in years past by the scooping and hauling of sand to the converters. It reminded me of the ghost towns I had read of as a kid, before telemovies and stereo-spools replaced the old historical novels carried over from the twentieth century. It was never haunted by Indians and buffalo, but it had seen its share of jackals and sand snakes, and the wild, little, brown baboon-faced Marties of the deserts had smashed all its windows when the Earthies moved on. Not many reduction plants were needed on Mars any more. The first homos to come had to wear atmosphere masks--a first-water paradox, because the rusty red deserts were full of good oxygen locked up in simple ferrous oxide form--but they soon changed that. When enough of them had come they set up atom-powered reduction plants by the hundreds, breaking the red sand back to its primal elements of iron and oxygen. They used the iron in their first cities and they let the oxygen go free. Before the Big Jump there used to be arguments, I've heard, to the effect that Earthies could never live permanently on Mars because the air was too thin and oxygen-poor. But unlocking oxygen from the sand solved half the problem, and the other half never existed. In the .38 gravity of Mars, any physical action requires only a fraction more than one-third as much effort as it would require on Earth. And only one-third as much oxygen is needed to sustain that effort. So a hundred years after Earthmen abandoned the Syrtis Major plant, I had a perfect place to lick my wounds in privacy. I berthed the _Annabelle_ in the old warehouse, opened her up from bow to stern to let out the stink of stale tobacco smoke and machine oil, and brought my second smiley out of the dusty records vault where I had hidden her. Cora was as affectionate as Joey and twice as eager. She made an earnest effort to hypnotize me with that euphoric mating call of hers, but when the khiff root kept me immune she settled down to staring wistfully across the desert toward Areopolis where Joey radiated back at her. I broke out the emergency rations I lived on while prospecting the asteroids or moon-hopping, and sat down to think. I had to clear myself with Captain Giles or I'd never see Areopolis or the Argonaut Club again. I had to break Shanig's claim against the _Annabelle_ or I'd be an asteroid prospector without a ship. In other words, a bum. And besides that I'd have to settle with Shanig for the slimy trick he had pulled on me or I'd be laughed out of the System. For some reason, considering that angle reminded me again of the unlikely old romances I'd read of the days when people rode horses and steam engines and chivvied buffalo around with red-hot stamping irons. They prospected for the rare earths--gold was a precious metal then, I think--and they had to keep their reputations as he-men intact or go down before the pellet guns of their fellow homos.