driven by voracious creatures of the sea into the shallows and at last to the inhospitable land. Now he was driven to a shore more inhospitable than any on Earth, oxygen-poor, water-poor: the Martian shore.

Many years ago his ancestors had learned to crawl instead of swim. He and his descendants—the descendants of Lori and Vali—could learn to crawl instead of walk. Those who crawled could survive and evolve, without domes, without marsuits, without any man-made equipment.

He reached the base of a giant cactus. He was sure it was not the one he had inhabited before, but now he had a knife.

In the distant night sky, he heard the drone of 'copter motors.

Shaan laid the girls down at his feet and dropped prone at the foot of the cactus. When the leaves of the canal sage had closed slowly above them, he took off his marshelmet.

"Man is man because he thinks, not because he walks erect," Shaan murmured to the unconscious girls. "Would your fate be better if you birthed children who had to live in a plastic dome?"

Shaan was a democrat. Rightly or wrongly, he was convinced that the Imperial Government bore within it the seeds of dissatisfaction and strife, eventually a war of rebellion that would crumble the domes and leave all the people of Mars to gasp away their lives.

Let them destroy themselves. Men would still live on Mars, without the domes.

With the handle of his knife, he smashed the marshelmet.

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