"Look," he said, pointing. "Water is coming down the ditches to our fields."

Miss Tweedham could see the water. Already the crops were responding to the magic touch of it. She could also see the glow on John Sanderson's face. The glow on his face was one of the nicest sights she had ever seen in her life. A man watching water come to parched fields....

"But I imagine you had a rather exciting night," he said, turning to her.

"Yes. Yes. It was that."

"Well, you will forget the horror of it. Maybe you can even learn to have fun telling your classes back on Earth about the wild night you spent on Mars." He grinned at her. "I don't know how you're fixed financially, but if you're broke, I imagine we can find passage money among us."

Miss Tweedham clutched her purse. "But what if I don't want to go back to Earth?"

His voice was gentle but with overtones of pain in it. "This is no place for a woman like you, a woman of refinement and culture."

"Why not?" she asked.

"Don't you know the truth about us yet?" he said, surprised. "Haven't you guessed it? None of us can go back to Earth. We're wanted men there."

"Criminals?" Miss Tweedham said, flinching.

"Yes." Sanderson choked over the word but he got it out.

"And what were you back on Earth?"

"I ran the Syndicate," Sanderson answered.

"Then that explains your genius for organization."

"I had had some experience in organization before I came here," Sanderson said, grimly. "That was why the boys made me boss. Now as to your return to Earth—"

"As I said before, maybe I don't want to go back."

Sanderson stared at her. "But you have to go back. You don't belong here."

"Maybe I came here for the same reason you and all the others came. Maybe I knew what I was coming to. Maybe I chose this place deliberately."

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