The Englishman said quietly, "Janu was my glory-hole foreman. He rather holds this against me." The Martian snarled, and then coughed. The cough became a paroxysm. He stumbled away, grey-faced and twitching, bent almost double. "It's the heat," said Loris, "and the damp. Poor devil." MacVickers thought of the air of Mars, cold and dry and pure. The floor rocked under him. Eyes, with the queer waiting shine to them, slid furtively to the hidden thing behind the standing men. The hot wet air lay on his lungs. He sweated. There was a stir of nausea in him and the lights swirled. He shut his jaw hard. He said, "What did Janu mean, the rest of our natural lives? They'll let us go when the war's over—if there's anything left to go to." There was a tight little silence. And then, from the shadows against the wall, there came a brittle, whispering laugh. "The war? They let us go before that!" The group parted. MacVickers had a brief glimpse of a huge man crouched in a strange position on the floor. Then he couldn't see anything but the shape that came slowly out into the light. It moved with a stiff, tottering gait, and its naked feet made a dry clicking sound on the metal floor. MacVickers' hand closed hard on the ladder behind him. It had been a man, an Earthman. His body was still tall, his features still fine. But there was a film over him, a pale blue-green sheathe that glistened dully. He thrust out an arm, with a hand on it like a hand carved in aquamarine. "Touch it," he whispered. MacVickers touched it. It was quite hard, and warm only with the heat of the air. MacVickers' grey-green eyes met the sunken, sheathed eyes of the Earthman. His body hurt with the effort to control it. "When we can no longer move," the whispering voice said, "they take us up the shaft and throw us over, into the mud. That's why you're here—because we were one man short." MacVickers put his hand back on the ladder rung. "How long?" "About three Earth months." He looked at the blue-green stain that smeared them all.
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