"I have many tapes and films, Mr. Peache," replied Britt, smiling. He was a short, slight man with close-cropped gray hair and round, guileless eyes. "I have my gardens, and the lowland of Lacus Lucrinus, and the desert." "Even so, I'm surprised you haven't found a woman to share all this beauty and wealth with you. I'm sure there are many of them who'd be willing." "No doubt," replied Britt drily. "But I am a man of peculiar tastes. I enjoy my own thoughts, and generally I prefer my own viewpoint unalloyed by the differing outlook of someone else. I find your company interesting for an evening, Mr. Peache, but few women could share this isolation without becoming bored and, consequently, a nuisance." Then Peache told Britt of his theory: that behind the accomplishments of every successful man, somewhere, lies the influence of a woman. It might be that his mother babied him far into puberty, and he achieved things to prove his integrity as an individual. It might be that he reacted to an unhappy love affair by proving himself a better man than his more fortunate rival. "In my case, I was the only boy among eight children," said Peache. "I chose the freedom of traveling about through space, I think, through an unconscious desire to escape from a female-dominated society. I think achievement in any field is a sublimation of the sex drive, and I understand you did not inherit any of your wealth, Mr. Britt, but amassed it all yourself." Britt was silent for a moment, contemplating the end of his cigar. "And, of course, you're curious about the conflicting stories that are spread around the system," he suggested. "Well, there was a woman, Mr. Peache, but I'm afraid what occurred has nothing to do with your theory." * * * * * West o' Mars (said Britt) represents a dream I have cherished, I think, since boyhood. I think the seed of the dream must have been sown when I saw the early newsfilms of the dome-cities on Luna and Mars. The dream drove me to study architecture. Man was expanding swiftly into space and my primary interest was in extra-terrestrial design. I faced a bright future. But twenty years ago, when I met Dori, the realization of West o' Mars seemed farther away than it had in boyhood. An architect's draftsman is paid well but not lavishly, and you can imagine what sort of wealth was required to build a place like this, forty million miles from Earth. My trouble was, I was in a hurry. My weakness was, I knew that the turn of a card or the roll of the dice could double my weekly salary. It could but, of course, as often as not it didn't. Consequently, I might be rich for a day, only to go hungry for a week. It was during one of the hungry periods in 2060 that I attended a meeting of the Astronaut Club for the sake of my stomach. I was living then in Huntsville, the Alabama spaceport city, and it was for business reasons that I belonged to the Astronaut Club.