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"This shaft leads up into the walls of the structure above above, although it is still underground and I have been up there often at night. It has long been my hope that I might be able to get a marsuit or a groundcar and make my escape, but they are kept locked up and always guarded, against the Jellies and the Toughs.

A disappointing resort area for an Earthwoman, this Solis Lacus Lowland. No swimming, no boating, no skiing. No water and no snow. Just a vast expanse of salty ground, blanketed with gray-green canal sage and dotted with the plastic domes of the resort chateaus. Nothing to do but hike in a marsuit or sun oneself under a dome.

If not, you may have to wait a while longer. "But I'll be back!" Brute Hennessey plodded westward through the Xanthe Desert, naked, wearing no marsuit, his head bare to the thin, oxygen-poor Martian air. The two small moons shone in the star-spangled sky above the lone figure, casting fantastic shadows on the sands. But this was not the stupid, shambling Brute Hennessey of a few months past.

"One of them got me just outside Mars City and blasted the dome of my groundcar." "I noticed you were wearing a marsuit when you registered here, and Gren said you were having the dome repaired." "That's what's peculiar about it. I wasn't wearing the marsuit when the copter broke my dome. I didn't have any protection at all. The groundcar went off the road and overturned.

Dark explained the circumstances to her; how he had awakened in the vat, how he had been able to breathe underwater, how the sight of Goat Hennessey had revived in him the memory of his identity as Brute, how he had been able to walk across the desert without a marsuit. "If you're Brute Hennessey, I know why you aren't dead," she said when he had finished.

Distorted, humpbacked and barrel-chested, it scuttled on reed-thin legs to Goat's side. It wore no marsuit. "Father!" screeched this apparition, its thin voice curiously muffled by the tenuous air. "Petway fell in the laundry vat!" "For the love of space!" muttered Goat in exasperation. "Is there water in it?" When the newcomer gave no sign of hearing, Goat realized his helmet speaker was off.

"What," he asked at last, "are you doing here, tinkering with a groundcar?" "Nuwell and I were on our way to Mars City by helicopter, when it failed and crashed," she explained. "This was the only place near enough for us to make it afoot, and the marsuit radios don't have the range to call for help. We've been here more than two weeks now, trying to repair these groundcars."

Happy and Shadow had followed the other two into the room and were standing against the door, holding it closed. "Maya, we're going to have to try to hold the corridor until the Phoenix gets here," said Dark. "I want you to go with Shadow and Happy down to the vats. You get into a marsuit, and they'll take you to one of the entrance buildings.

A rent in this city's dome, a failure in our oxygen machinery, a clogging of our pumping system by the ever-present sand, and most of us would die before help could reach us from our nearest neighbors. "We live here under certain restrictions that many of us do not like. Certainly, no one likes to be unable to step out under the open sky without wearing a bulky marsuit and an oxygen tank.

Nakedness felt quite natural to Dark, especially since he remembered his identity as Brute, but it occurred to him that it would look peculiar to anyone he might meet before leaving Ultra Vires or, for that matter, on his way back to the Canfell Hydroponic Farm. So he donned a marsuit himself, leaving off the helmet. Carrying the other three marsuits, he went down the corridor to the motor pool.