One of the last things Mitch said, was, "Got any cigarettes, Frank? Selma likes one, once in a while." "Sure. Three packs here inside my Archer. Mighty small hospitality gift, Mitch..." After the 'copter drifted away, it seemed that a curtain drew over Nelsen's mind, blurring the whole memory. It was as though _they_ had planned that. It was almost as though Mitch, and Selma, as he had just seen them, were just another mind-fantasy of the Heebie-Jeebie Planet, created by its present masters. "Should we believe it?" Nance whispered. "My cigarettes are gone," Frank told her. At the Survey Station they got weary looks from Ed Huth. "I guess I picked a wrong man, Nelsen," he said. "It looks as though you did, Ed," Frank replied. "I'm really sorry." They got worse hell from a little doctor from Italy, whose name was Padetti. They were asked a lot of questions. They fibbed some, but not entirely. "We sort of blanked out, Doctor," Nance told him. "I suppose we spent most of our time in the desert, living in our Archers. There were the usual distorted hallucinations of Syrtis Fever. A new strain, I suspect... Four months gone? Oh, no...!" She must have had a time evading his questions for the next month, while she worked, again, in the lab. Maybe he did divine half of the truth, at last. Maybe he even was sympathetic toward the thickets that he was trying to defeat. Nelsen wasn't allowed to touch another helicopter. During that month, between brief but violent seizures of the fever, he was employed as a maintenance mechanic. Then the news came. There had been an emergency call from Pallastown. Rescue units were to be organized, and rocketed out in high-velocity U.N.S.F. and U.S.S.F bubbs. There had been sabotage, violence. The Town was three-quarters gone, above the surface. Planned attack or--almost worse--merely the senseless result of space-poisoned men kicking off the lid in a spree of hell-raising humor and fun? Nelsen was bitter. But he also felt the primitive excitement--almost an eagerness. That was the savage paradox in life. "You still have the dregs of Syrtis Fever," a recruiting physician told him. "But you know the Belt. That makes a big difference... All right--you're going..." Nance Codiss didn't have that experience. Her lab background wasn't enough. So she was stuck, on Mars. Nelsen had been pestering her to marry him. Now, in a corner of the crowded lounge, he tried again. She shook her head. "You'd still have to leave me, Frank," she told him. "Because that's the way strong people _have_ to be--when there's trouble to be met. Let's wait. Let's know a little better where we're at--please, darling. I'll be all right. Contact me when you can..." Her tone was low and tender and unsteady. He hugged her close. Soon, he was aboard a GO-rocket, shooting up to Phobos to join the assembling rescue team. He wondered if this was the beginning of the end... VIII