There was no time to decide whether it would be better inside or outside the house. She pulled the bag over her head inside out, so the zipper would close completely. Then she folded the zipper part under once and wedged herself as far as she could go into the space between shrub and hemisphere, holding the oxygen mask in her teeth. With infinite care, though she was not likely to split the heavy bag, she pulled off her shoes and her heavy, woollen walking socks. She put the shoes back on. Her slacks covered her legs. Only her ankles were bare. She unraveled one sock and stuffed the yarn in her ears. There was a sudden, remarkable quiet. Then, even through the yarn came the roar of the storm. For it was upon her. She looked through the milky plastic into a wild, red inferno, spitting at her in furious frustration. Then she bound the other sock over her eyes. She was in a blind, muffled world now, buffeted against the shrub and the wires and the steel rib, but not painfully, because of her heavy clothing. It was as though suddenly all her senses had been switched to the last pitch before silence. "I might live," Annie thought. "I might." * * * * * There was sand in the bag now. Annie could feel it sifting under her collar and blowing up her ankles. Not much. It was coming from the bottom of the bag. Probably the end of the zipper had worked open just a little. Was that the dull roar of the storm through her stoppered ears or the rushing of her own blood? If sand were seeping in, the storm must still be on. How did Bradman breathe in his storm cellar? Would the storm last long enough for the air to go bad? It would go bad fast, in an enclosed place on Mars. Bradman. What sort of monster would walk off and let another human being die? Without a glance backwards? Did the cold desert wear the humanity out of a man? How did a human being get like that? "'You've got a smile like a concrete slab.'" Is that what you say to a person when you know you're about to leave them to die? UNMARRIED WOMEN BETWEEN THE AGES OF 21 AND 30. GOOD HEALTH. WELL ADJUSTED. MARRIAGE ON ARRIVAL. MARS TRANSPORT LEAVES OCT. 1. Good health ... well adjusted ... she could see the printed words, red stereo words reaching out from the page. Unmarried women between ... they came and went in her mind and there was a roar in her ears. The words were gone now. Only a redness that came and went. No. A blackness. Annie snatched the exhausted oxygen mask off her face and gulped a pallid, sandy breath of air. It wouldn't do. She took the sock off her eyes and bound it around her nose and mouth. It would filter some of the sand out. She opened her eyes briefly and closed them. The grit stayed in. She didn't dare open them again. But the storm looked weaker. Or was it her imagination? She groped for the zipper. Foul air would kill her quicker than sand. She couldn't find it.