Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 238: what you’re looking at

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

| hoped that back in the Enclosures, Martian hymns drowned us out as though we'd never existed. The visiscreen was a black velvet tapestry-studded with all the jewelry Nature wore for men to see, and | was thankful that Kruger wasn’t trying to make small talk. | wouldn't have answered him and | think he knew it. It went on that way for a week or so. After that | guess he couldn’t take it, or maybe he'd been thinking thoughts of his own, but finally he opened up, and | found my own voice. “Underneath you think I’m quite a louse,” he said. “When you're dead | hope somebody builds a hot-dog Stand on your grave.” “Or a branch of the stock exchange, | know. Probably somebody will. And | won't be able to stop it, Wes.” He turned his face a little from the computer panels, helped himself to one of my cigarettes. The hardness I'd expected to see wasn’t there, and | started feeling mixed up again. “You'd like me to ditch the ship night-side, square in the middle of the Pacific, wouldn’t you, laddie?” “The thought’s occurred to me! That way at least it’d be five years before they could get back up there, before the leeches could get their claws in—” “It would be romantic, anyway,” Max said, almost as though he were actually considering the idea. “Romantic as hell. But life goes on. It goes on, and we've got to bring her in, Wes.” “And be heroes?” “And be heroes.” | got a little bit profane. But Max wasn’t getting sore, because | guess he knew how close | was to going pffut. “All right,” | said finally. “Okay. So it’s not our fault they’re dying- dead ... but the one time in our lives we're in a position to do ” CORniclooo SS CO