... _I-all, descended, evolved, changed, mutated, attenuated, substance of sentience: broken to one-cells; joined in one-thinkingness; stretched out to use all the sparse vapors spread round a planet; combined, united, one-minded but many-celled--starch-makers, water-bags, air-holders, carriers, sun-suckers, thought-senders, soil-savers, moss-tenders, all of the others, all of the kinds of me-us, one-cell and one-cell; and here in the dim place of safehold, the grouped one-cells, planners and thoughtmakers fed, watered, warmed, by my-our other-I’s, sending out callings for feeders, airers, for heaters, waterers, all to send extras with carriers to the vault, to tend the Earth-brother_.... * * * * * Doug would have been all right, except that he misjudged the distance. If he had realized he’d have to go all the way to the old city to reach It-Them, he would have done the whole thing differently. He’d have told Wendt where he meant to go--if not why--and taken a heli. If he realized, he would have lived. If _They-It_ had realized--if the two Russians had come to It-Them sooner after the crash, had lived a bit longer to tell more and learn more, if They-It had been able to learn from the first two that for Earth-bodies the life of the brain alone is not sufficient--If It-They had understood the whole human mechanism, perhaps he’d have lived. Whether the Martian (call it that; call it “it”, there is no proper pronoun) could have summoned resources sufficient to keep Doug alive--for years, as it would have been--until help came, the Moon-Martian did not know. But the Martian had too little information to plan ahead, and it took planning. It _could_ have stopped him; _would_ have, had it known his supplies would run out before he reached the vault, or that its own preparations were foolishly inadequate. But the centuries--aeons? millennia? How long, Moon-Martian also did not know--of one-ness, alone in togetherness with all just oneself, the long-long loneliness had only been outlined, sharp-edged, and identified, when the two Russians came for so short a time. Laughlin came closer, and it sent its call stronger and clearer, more endearing. Laughlin’s cat sputtered and failed, and without thinking, he strapped the spare oxy tank on his back and set out afoot. He lived ten days inside the vault beneath what he and Johnny had decided must have been a Martian bank, but had been built especially to guard, preserve, tend, grow, the brain-centre of the planet-wide “body” of the last Martian--the brain into which was poured the memory and knowledge, skill and affections and hopes and dreams and lost beliefs and yearnings and ideals of a race which could not in its own first form survive the stripping of the atmosphere from the old planet.