Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 228: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

No, no! Five million people just didn’t die like that. Not so calmly, so— Yes. Yes, perhaps so quietly. | looked at her face, and it struggled to be a mask, fought for the composure that was the hallmark of the exquisite mind behind it. But the large green eyes were wet, and the red, delicate lips were almost of the whiteness of the Smooth flesh around them, and taut in a hard little controlled line. And that was when | learned that Martians, like anyone else, could cry. “lyae" “Please, Mr. Latham, please hear me out ... When our forebears realized that we were or soon would be at the limit of our physical adaptability to our steadily deteriorating environment, the Enclosures were at once designed and begun. “Tl mean to detract nothing from their great achievement; it was a thing of inspired genius, and a thing of which our race has rightfully been proud for centuries. It took five hundred years to build and equip the Enclosures— there are, in all, three hundred of them—and as they were built, new cities were simultaneously constructed within them... For a moment, she was a Teacher again, patiently explaining to a somewhat less-than-apt pupil. “It was a monumental step—bordering on the fantastic as it did—but after the Enclosures were occupied, one by one, the race was Safe. “Impossible—yes, it is easy enough to say ‘impossible’ until life begins to run out. And then—then all there is in you fights. And if there is enough in you, you win... . “They would not let go, Mr. Latham. They would not let go, not slip for an inch, for even then they knew that theirs CORniclooo SS CO