“Yes, all subsidiary branches were blocked off from the two main arteries. Once the arteries became filled, and the Pads--we hoped--electrocuted, the other branches would have been opened; including the minor ones connecting directly with the polar caps.” “What do you say to taking McGinnis over to the ruins?” Potterboy asked. “Since I’m leaving tonight, and probably never visiting Mars again, I would like to gaze, cynically, on the business that started this whole damned white elephant project rolling!” “Since you’re going to be here for a year or two, McGinnis,” Grisby said, “you can wait and go out later, when you have more chronological data concerning the project?” “No, I might as well go out now. I’m feeling rather restless and depressed--I always do, at the end of some big dream like the Martian Project.” * * * * * The administration buildings towered like mountains against the flat, two-dimensional sandiness of Syrtis Major. The three men in sun goggles and chemically cooled clothing looked like insects as they trudged across the reddish, iron-oxide nightmare. Heat waves rolled up into the pale sky like breakers from some gigantic ocean. Blottings Pads, resembling shiny, green fish, darted swiftly as they moved out of the pathway of the men. “We could have taken a jet out,” Grisby was saying, “but I wanted McGinnis to see the desert, Cones, and Pads first hand. Incidentally, there’s approximately one Pad to every twenty square feet of Mars. They slowly, but constantly, rotate counter-clockwise around the planet. That way, they all get a crack at what little water forms around the polar cap edges.” In spite of the intense heat, Potterboy had another cigar going, on which he would puff heavily before speaking. “Sabotage, of one sort or another, seems to be the only answer to these polar furnaces. The first two explode, and the second two sink! I can’t help feeling that someone doesn’t want Mars resurrected from its sandy grave.” “Yes,” Grisby said, with a sarcastic laugh, “the Blotting Pads don’t! But, then, I doubt if they know that they don’t. They’re completely unintelligent--just a couple of instincts in a rubbery bag, absorbing water and transmuting it into tar. And, as you know, Potterboy, all men and technicians were given a six month psycho before being allowed to work on the project; then carefully watched for any sign of dangerous neuroses.” For awhile, they walked along listening to the crunch of their feet on the sand, saying nothing. The ruins loomed steadily larger through the rippling heat waves. Finally, Grisby said, “There is one puzzling thing--not a single man in the eighteen years we’ve been here, has lost his life or met with an accident.” “How do you account for that?” McGinnis asked. “I don’t. Nor can anyone else. Our equipment seems to have been the only thing meeting with disasters.”