Still, it was the only life left for a strong, active man, and he had been following it for four years now and would certainly continue it until the little man's plans were carried out. And carried out they would be--of that he was confident. Proud, too. Proud that his quiet faith in the future of mankind had proven itself in spite of the contempt and cynical ridicule of some of the best minds in the decadent, dying Science Hall, where he had received his training for this job. Not, he thought wryly, that they didn't have excellent reason for their cynicism. Few people had quite as much opportunity as he to see what was happening to the world, how effeminate its inhabitants were becoming. The patrol had been recently cut in half, not for any lack of material resources, but due rather to the fact that there weren't enough men to fill the ranks. A man with sufficient stamina to be in the Patrol, plus the necessary mental and emotional stability, was practically unobtainable. Perhaps, he mused, that was why men in the Patrol married so well; they were the very cream of mankind, the finest group of its kind on earth. But the thought of women and marriage brought the old hurt and the old memory, and he turned his attention to checking his unquestionably accurate course in an equally old and equally futile attempt to forget the past. Finding it correct, as he had known it would be, he leaned back in his chair against the centrifugal push of the ship as it banked slightly and headed in for Mars. Then a buzzer made frantic bees' noise, and he released the automatic pilot, taking the controls himself. The buzzer had been a warning that atmosphere was close, and it takes a human hand to handle a rocket in an atmosphere. It was possible, of course, that this trip of his was purely a waste of energy, but it wasn't his job to guess; he was the type who made sure first--if he had not been, the Patrol would never have accepted him. With one hand he reached over and flicked on the televisor. He wouldn't be able to hear much, and already knew the general trend of the little man's plan, but to have that belief around which his entire philosophy of life had been built borne out by the man who was himself to restore mankind to the glory that was its heritage, to the ultimate fulfilment of its age-old quest--that, indeed, was worth the hearing. The image of the little man snapped on the screen with an abruptness that was startling after the long minutes required for the televisor to warm up. The colors were blurred from the distortion of millions of miles of travel in space, but the ruddy nose of the little man was still prominent. Above the crashing pound of the rockets, Lawrence heard faintly, "... the psychologists have long known the reason for this soul-decay in man...." * * * * *