All at once Corriston realized that an amazing discussion was going on. They were discussing an eleven-year-old boy who had done an absolutely crazy thing. He had followed his father into the desert by concealing himself in one of the tractors, behind a liquid-fuel cylinder, and was now a member of the 210 man rescue team. "Mars is no place for a kid. Dr. Drever ought to be ashamed of himself. If a man has children--well, Mars is simply no place for children." "That's right. A boy of eleven needs companions his own age to help him over the growingpain hurdles. He needs a backyard to play in. When I was a kid I had a bike of my own, a bull terrier pup, a collection of butterflies, a stamp collection and a simply amazing talent for roughing up my clothes. "Mars is the worst of all possible worlds for a kid like Freddy. We're buoyed up by the bigness and the newness and the strangeness of everything. The mile-high granite cliffs don't really belong to a planet smaller than Earth. But they're here and we accept them. We pit our technical brilliance--or lack of it--against the rugged grandeur of the mountains and the plains and we can take even the sandstorms in our stride. But to bring a kid here--" "Drever is a widower. He quite naturally didn't want to put his son in an orphanage. Besides, there are thirteen other young kids in the Colony." "That doesn't excuse it. There are plenty of childless single men." "How many of them could step into Drever's shoes and grow to his stature as the first really great medical specialist on Mars? You're forgetting the hell he had to go through just to pass the preliminary screening. It's rugged for a man of his attainments. They not only insist that he be good; they want him to be the best." "That's true enough, I suppose. And now that he's here he probably couldn't be replaced. Experience of a very special sort does things for a man. And _to_ a man, if you like." "I'm simply stressing that Mars is simply not a place for a kid of Freddy's age. When he goes roaming he gets his lungs choked with dust. He couldn't ride a bike on Mars--if he had a bike. Worst of all, he has no kids of his own age to play with. And now he comes on a trip like this. Does he hope to rescue the Ramsey girl all by himself?" Corriston got up then. The three men who had been discussing Dr. Drever's son stood by the smoldering embers of a burnt out campfire. They were kindly looking men but a certain narrow-mindedness was stamped on the faces of at least two of them. Corriston shrugged off his weariness and walked up to them. "Nonsense!" he said. A startled look came into the eyes of the oldest, a grizzled scarecrow of a man whose beard descended almost to his waist. He was a Martian geologist, and a good one. "Eh, Lieutenant. I was just going to ask you. Shouldn't we get started?"