"Rosie had no mind," the voice said out in the darkness. "That is, no mind to speak of. But she was telepathic. Her brain picked up thoughts and passed them on. And she could obey simple commands. Very simple commands. And killing a man is so simple, Mr. West. "Rosie stood here beside me and I knew every word that you and Belden said. I did not blame you, West, for you had no way of knowing what you did. But I did blame Belden and I sent Rosie up to get him. "There's only one thing, West, that I hold against you. You should not have killed Rosie. That was a great mistake, West, a very great mistake." "It was no mistake," said West. "I did it on purpose." "Take it easy, Mr. West," said Cartwright. "Don't do anything that might make me pull the trigger. Because I have a gun on you. Dead center on you, West, and I never miss." "I'll give you odds," said West, "that I can get you before you can pull the trigger." "Now, Mr. West," said Cartwright, "let's not get hot-headed about this. Sure, you pulled a fast one on us. You tried to muscle in and you almost sold us, although eventually we would have tripped you up. And I admire your guts. Maybe we can work it out so no one will get killed." "Start talking," West told him. "It was too bad about Rosie," said Cartwright, "and I really hold that against you, West, for we could have used Rosie to good advantage. But after all, the work is started on the other planets and we still have Stella. Our students are well grounded ... they can get along without instructions for a little while and maybe by the time we need to get in contact with them again we can find another one to replace our Rosie." "Quit wandering around," said West. "Let's hear what you have in mind." "Well," said Cartwright, "we're getting awfully short-handed. Belden's dead and Darling's dead and if Robertson isn't dead by now he will be very shortly. For after he took Stella to Earth, he tried to desert, tried to run away. And that would never do, of course. He might tell folks about us and we can't let anyone do that. For we are dead, you see...." He chuckled, the chuckle rolling through the darkness. "It was a masterpiece, West, that broadcast. I was the last man alive and I told them what had happened. I told them the spacetime continuum had ruptured and things were coming through. And I gurgled ... I gurgled just before I died." "You didn't really die, of course," West said, innocently. "Hell, no. But they think I did. And they still wake up screaming, thinking how I must have died." Ham, thought West. Pure, unadulterated ham. A jokester who would maroon a man to die on a lonely moon. A man who held a gun in his fist while he bragged about the things he'd done ... about how he had outwitted Earth. "You see," said Cartwright, "I had to make them believe that it really happened. I had to make it so horrible that the government would never make it public, so horrible they'd close the planet with an iron-tight ban."