“And you don’t want to return to Fami?”
“No.”
“You only come with me because I feed you and there is no food on the plain?”
“It is nice to be fed. I always had to feed others.”
He sighed, and felt oddly regretful. He would have preferred that she kept him company just because she liked him. He’d certainly grown to like having her around in this cold, dreary desolation. She was, for instance, less unsettling company than Captain Freiburg, for she was uncomplicated, self-controlled, unfearful of the present or the future. And, underneath, deep down, he’d found a queer little streak of quiet humor. Not the purely surface kind of facetious humor, the cover-up for uncertainty, but the genuine vein, seeing things for what they were and smiling at them, unafraid.
Suddenly, she said: “Of course, if I wished, I could take the food any time I wanted to.”
“No, Mara, not now. The box is locked and the key is in my pocket.”
She made no answer, but presently fidgeted about as though she were trying to get in a comfortable position for sleep. George lay there dozing lightly and wondering formlessly about the men back at the space-ship. Had there been any further attacks? How was the work on the fins going? He’d been away almost a week now, and almost anything might have happened back there. Again, how was he going to get back to the ship? If he contacted the white circle Venusians soon, and they happened to be in a cooperative mood, they might provide transport. If not, if he never found them, then it wasn’t going to be easy.
The automatic direction-recorder in the helicopter had been pulverised in the crash. So he’d small notion of where the ship lay from here. He only knew that out on the plain were mountain ranges other than this one, and the ship was somewhere over the other side of them. Even if he attained the general locality, the ship, laying flat as it was, wouldn’t be easy to spot in this poor visibility, even through the telescope.
He might wander past it and get utterly lost.
Again, at this rate, it could be weeks before he got back there. By which time, if they’d got the ship operative, and Freiburg with his will-to-quit complex, they might well have given him up for dead and taken off for Earth, licking their wounds.
He started out of his gloomy reverie when he heard something—or rather, some things—fall onto his rough pillow. He identified them by touch; half a dozen food bars.
He sat up and stared into the freezing dark. He reached out and touched Mara’s quiescent form. With the other hand he fumbled in his pocket: the key was still there.
“Yes?” she said, without moving.
“Did I leave the box unlocked?”
“No. I don’t need keys. I have my own methods.”
“Oh.” He lay back. There was something wrong with this analysis of Mara’s reasoning. She could have helped herself to the food at any time, of course, and disappeared into the night. That should have been her natural course, thieving being her profession. They’d argued over the ethics of honest labor as opposed to honest thieving. He had explained the social code of Earth, but she had not been impressed. They’d agreed to differ about that.
“Mara,” he said, “you could have stolen all the food and left me. Why didn’t you?”
“Then I should have to carry it, and that box is heavy.”
He was disappointed. “So that’s all. It’s not because you like me?”
“I like you.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t want me to steal for you. Everyone I knew, except my father, thought that the only point of my existence was to be their artist. You make no such demands on me. So I like you.”
“Um.” It still wasn’t quite satisfactory. He said: “I like you, too, Mara. Good-night.” And turned over to go to sleep. But he couldn’t sleep for a long while. He kept thinking about how he liked Mara.
In the morning they reached a point on the glacier from which they could see Fami. Rather, could have seen it had it been there to see. George, through his telescope, searched the region indicated by Mara, and could discern no trace of the ledge. The outflanking arm of the glacier had swept over it and now hung, like a huge, torn, white lace
