WEST O' MARS By CHARLES L. FONTENAY Illustrated by JOHN SCHOENHERR _Peache believed that behind every man lies the influence of a woman. Influence, though, can take odd forms...._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Infinity April 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Of all the planets, Peache liked Mars best. Peache was a salesman, and his territory was the inhabited planets and moons. There were things he liked about each one, even Earth, but he particularly enjoyed the gentle gravity of Mars--a gravity that made him feel as though he were flying when he walked in long, easy leaps, and yet didn't frighten him by letting him shoot halfway out to space. His stop at Mars in 2081 added an experience which Peache considered an extraordinary piece of luck. Having supper with Samlaan Britt in West o' Mars was comparable to having tea with Shah Jehan in the Taj Mahal. The supper had been incomparable. Now the two of them sat in the Dice Room of the tower, warmed by a green and orange blaze in the huge fireplace, and smoked the sweet, strong, foot-long cigars that are produced only in the Hadriacum Lowlands of Mars. Beyond the double-thick glass of the window-wall, the sun was setting behind the fantastic dunes of the Aeolia Desert. Around them in the dim-lit room, the air was thick with cigar smoke, haunted by the aura of legend. The tales of the founding of West o' Mars were vague: Peache had heard the vast wealth that built it had been won on a single throw of the dice, that Britt had been driven to build it by the hatred of a woman he loved, that he had built it above the bones of a man who had stolen his wife, that it was a memorial to his wife. While he was here, Peache hoped to sift truth from fancy, for he was a man of romantic bent. Below them the tower dropped down the side of the cliff to a clear dome on the now-shadowed lowland of Lacus Lucrinus. The dome enclosed most of the majestic building and its exotic gardens from the thin, oxygen-poor Martian air. It was a daring conception, nowhere duplicated--an air-tight building that projected high above its plasticene dome. Peache inhaled a long sweet draft of smoke and blessed the fact that his product was the latest in weather-control units. Only for such a major purchase would Samlaan Britt have invited him here. "You aren't married, Mr. Britt," said Peache when the conversation provided him with an opening. "Don't you get lonesome out here, hundreds of miles from the nearest city, with no one around but robots?"