"That's all right," I said. "My dad and mother came out to the hospital to see me when I first got back." He was a big, fine-looking important sort of man, with a little bit of the stuffed shirt about him, I thought. He seemed friendly enough, but I got the feeling he was looking at me and wondering why I'd come back and his son Walter hadn't. Well, I couldn't blame him for that.
His car was waiting, a big car with a driver, and we started north through the city. Mr, Millis pointed out a few things to me to make conversation, especially a big atomic- power station we passed.
"It's only one of thousands, strung all over the world," he said. "They're going to transform our whole economy. This Martian uranium will be a big thing, Sergeant." I said, yes, I guessed it would.
I was sweating blood, waiting for him to start asking about Walter, and I didn't know yet just what I could tell him. I could get myself in Dutch plenty if I opened my big mouth too wide, for that one thing that had happened to Expedition Two was supposed to be strictly secret, and we'd all been briefed on why we had to keep our mouths shut.
But he let it go for the time being, and just talked other stuff. I gathered that his wife wasn't too well, and that Wal- ter had been their only child. I also gathered that he was a very big shot in business, and dough-heavy. I didn't like him, Walter I'd liked plenty, but his old man seemed a pretty pompous person, with his heavy busi- ness talk.
He wanted to know how soon I thought Martian ura- nium would come through in quantity, and I said I didn't think it'd be very soon.
"Expedition One only located the deposits," I said, "and Two just did mapping and setting up a preliminary base. Of course, the thing keeps ex~nding, and I hear Four will have a hundred rockets. But Mars is a tough setup." Mr. Millis said decisively that I was wrong, that the world was power-hungry, that it would be pushed a lot faster than I expected.
He suddenly quit talking business and looked at me and asked, "Who was Walter's best friend out there?" He asked it sort of apologetically. He was a stuffed shirt; but all my dislike of him went away then.
"Breck Jergen," I told him. "Breck was our sergeant. He sort of held our squad together, and he and Walter cottoned to each other from the first."
Mr. Millis nodded, but didn't say anything more about it. He pointed out the window at the distant lake and said we were almost to his home.
It wasn't a home, it was a big mansion. We went in and he introduced me to Mrs. Millis. She was a limp, pale- looking woman, who said she was glad to meet one of Walter's friends. Somehow I got the feeling that even though he was a stuffed shirt, he felt it about Walter a lot more than she did.
He took me up to a bedroom and said that Brock's parents would arrive before dinner, and that I could get a little rest before then.
I sat looking around the room. It was the plushiest one I'd ever been in, and, seeing this house and the way these people lived, I began to understand why Walter had blown his top more than the rest of us.
He'd been a good guy, Walter, but high-tempered, and I could see now he'd been a little spoiled. The discipline at training base had been tougher on him than on most of us, and this was why.
I sat and dreaded this dinner that was coming up, and looked out the window at a swimming pool and tennis court, and wondered if anybody ever used them now that Walter was gone. It seemed a queer thing for a fellow with a setup like this to go out to Mars and get himself killed. I took the satin cover off the bed so my shoes wouldn't dirty it, and lay down and closed my eyes, and wondered what I was going to tell them. The trouble was, I didn't know what story the officials had given them.
"The Commanding Officer regrets to inform you that your son was shot down like a dog…"
They'd never got any telegram like that. But just what line had been handed them? I wished I'd had a chance to check on that.
Damn it, why didn't all these people let me alone? They started it all going through my mind again, and the psychos had told me I ought to forget it for a while, but how could I? It might be better just to tell them the truth. After all, Walter wasn't the only one who'd blown his top out there. In that grim last couple of months, plenty of guys had gone around sounding off.
Expedition Three isn't coming!
We're stuck, and they don't care enough about us to send help!
That was the line of talk. You heard it plenty, in those days. You couldn't blame the guys for it, either. A fourth of us down with Martian sickness, the little grave markers clotting up the valley beyond the ridge, rations getting thin, medicine running low, everything running low, all of us watching the sky for rockets that never came. There'd been a little hitch back on Earth, Colonel Nichols explained. (He was our C.O. now (BSPGeneral Rayen had died.) There was a little delay, but the rockets would be on their way soon, we'd get relief, we just had to hold on. Holding onthat's what we were doing. Nights we'd sit in the Quonset and listen to Lassen coughing in his bunk, and it seemed like wind-giants, cold-giants, were bawling and laughing around our little huddle of shelters.
"Damn it, if they're not coming, why don't we go home?" Walter said. "We've still got the four rocketsthey could take us all back."
Breck's serious face got graver. "Look, Walter, there's too much of that stuff being talked around. Lay off."
"Can you blame the men for talking it? We're not story- book heroes. If they've forgotten about us back on Earth, why do we just sit and take it?"
"We have to," Breck said. "Three will-come."
I've always thought that it wouldn't have happened, what did happen, if we hadn't had that falSe alarm. The one that set the whole camp wild that night, with guys shouting,
"Three's here! The rockets landed over west of Rock Ridgel" Only when they charged out there, they found they hadn't seen rockets landing at all, but a little shower of tiny meteors burning themselves up as they fell.
It was the disappointment that did it, I think. I can't say for sure, because that same day was the day I conked out with Martian sickness, and the ffoor came up and hit me and I woke up in the bunk, with somebody giving me a hypo, and my head big as a balloon. I wasn't clear out, it was only a touch of it, but it was enough to make everything foggy, and I didn't know about the mutiny that was boiling up until I woke up once with Breck leaning over me and saw he wore a gun and an M.P. brassard now.
When I asked him how come, he said there'd been so much wild talk about grabbing the four rockets and going home that the M;P. force had been doubled and Nichols had issued stern warnings.
"Walter?" I said, and Breck nodded. "He's a leader and he'll get hit with a court-martial when this is over. The blasted idiot!"
"I don't get ithe's got plenty of guts, you know that," I said.
"Yes, but he can't take discipline, he never did take it very well, and now that the squeeze is on he's blowing up. Well, see you later, Frank."
I saw him later, but not the way I expected. For that was the day we heard the faint echo of shots, and then the alarm siren screaming, and men running, and half-tracks starting up in a hurry. And when I managed to get out of my bunk and out of the hut, they were all going toward the big rockets, and a corporal yelled to me from a jeep, "That's blown it! The damn fools swiped guns and tried to take over the rockets and make the crews fly 'em homel" I could still remember the sickening slidings and bounc- ings of the jeep as it took us out there, the milling little crowd under the looming rockets, milling around and hiding something on the ground, and Major Weiler yelling himself hoarse giving orders.