The house he went into was over in that crumbling section which forms a curving boundary line, marking the limits of those frantic and ugly original mine-workings made many years ago by the early colonists. It seems that someone had told someone who had told someone else that here, a mere twenty feet beneath the surface, was a vein as wide as a house and as long as a fisherman's alibi, of pure--_pure_, mind you--gold. Back in those days, to be a colonist meant to be a rugged individual. And to be a rugged individual meant to not give a damn one way or another. And to not give a damn one way or another meant to make one hell of a mess on the placid face of Mars. There had not been any gold found, of course, and now, for the most part, the mining shacks so hastily thrown up were only fever scars of a sickness long gone and little remembered. A few of the houses were still occupied, like the one into which the Martian boy had just disappeared. So his _mother_ had taught him the William Tell Overture, had she? That tickling thought made me chuckle as I stood before the ramshackle building. And then, suddenly, I stopped chuckling and began to think, instead, of something quite astonishing: How had it been possible for her to teach, and for him to whistle? _All Martians are as tone-deaf as a bucket of lead._ I went up three slab steps and rapped loudly on the weather-beaten door. * * * * * The woman who faced me may have been as young as twenty-two, but she didn't look it. That shocked look, which comes with the first realization that youth has slipped quietly away downstream in the middle of the night, and left nothing but frightening rocks of middle age to show cold and gray in the hard light of dawn, was like the validation stamp of Time itself in her wide, wise eyes. And her voice wasn't young any more, either. "Well? And what did I do now?" "I beg your pardon?" I said. "You're Mobile Security, aren't you? Or is that badge you're wearing just something to cover a hole in your shirt?" "Yes, I'm Security, but does it have to mean something?" I asked. "All I did was knock on your door." "I heard it." Her lips were curled slightly at one corner. I worked up a smile for her and let her see it for a few seconds before I answered: "As a matter of fact, I don't want to see _you_ at all. I didn't know you lived here and I don't know who you are. I'm not even interested in who you are. It's the little boy who just went in here that I was interested in. The little Martian boy, I mean." Her eyes spread as though somebody had put fingers on her lids at the outside corners and then cruelly jerked them apart. "Come in," she almost gasped.