In two places the ridge was broken, the wind whistling through the gap. I'd have stopped at the first if it hadn't been obvious that, left unaided, Aileen was going to be swept away in a few minutes. I don't know quite how I did cross the two gaps. I certainly didn't walk, and I didn't crawl. I must simply have thrown myself across and grabbed the rock.
Just before I reached Aileen the thought crossed my mind that if it had been Morgan, not she, a problem would have been solved. I could have stayed put and watched him fight his battle with the storm and lose it. But I couldn't be sure that I'd have let even Morgan die. In a turmoil like that, a man might be insane enough to risk his life to save an enemy, simply to try to cheat the gale and because they were both human beings.
I reached Aileen and grasped her firmly. I had seen her often and nodded to her, but I had never actually spoken to her except for those few words in the hospital.
"Thanks," she gasped. "I couldn't have lasted much longer."
"Let's get five yards back," I said. I could feel the words being ripped out of my mouth and swept away across the desert. "There's a safe place for both of us."
We made it with a struggle. The ridge was only about four feet high, but at that point there was a crack into which we could wedge ourselves. We jammed our legs in together and stood breast to breast like dancers in a ballroom. Aileen could lean back a little against the rock, and did. She seemed rather embarrassed. The situation was too serious for me to be embarrassed at all.
"Where are you hurt?" I asked.
"Arm, side, and head, I think," she said.
I checked her injuries, but they seemed minor -- minor, at any rate, while the world was being blown apart at the seams. She wasn't going to be able to use her left arm for a day or two, her fair hair was clotted with blood, and she had a six-inch gash in her side -- but what was that when hundreds of people were being dashed to pulp all about us?
"What happened to the rest of 92?" I asked.
"They're all right. They got under cover. I didn't quite make it. How about your group, Lieutenant Easson?"
"In the pit," I said. I grinned wryly. "In the circumstances, Aileen, I think you might call me Bill."
She smiled. "I suppose so, Bill. How long do you think this'll last?"
"Since nothing quite like this has happened before, any guesses I might make would be worthless. I'd have thought it would have been over long since."
Instead of its being over, we suddenly found ourselves enveloped in the dust cloud of all time. We shut our eyes, not only to protect them, but because we couldn't see anything anyway.
The flying dust and sand pierced our skin like thousands of tiny needles. I felt a sharp twinge in my neck as a cloud of sand peppered it like buckshot. I put my hand to the back of my neck and it came away sticky with blood.
Then just as the worst of the dust storm seemed to be over and I opened my eyes cautiously, rain swept over us, hammering our skin, beating on our temples.
Aileen's voice came to me from a long way off. "You don't mind if I . . . ?" She straightened against me and put her arms around me.
I clutched her tightly. "I don't mind at all," I said.
In a few seconds we were awash, water running down from our shoulders to our ankles. I felt a stream from Aileen's knee transferring itself to my calf. Gradually the gray dust that had covered us was washed away, like chalk marks on a wall when a shower starts.
Aileen was crying. Her tears seemed to surprise her more than they surprised me. She made a desperate effort to stop, and told me fiercely: "I don't know why I'm doing this. It's not because I'm hurt."
I understood, because I felt like crying too. I've heard of men doing it in storms on Earth, when their utter impotence is brought home to them. Here there was all there had been in storms on Earth, plus the insecurity and helplessness of being so lightly secured to the surface of the world by the weak, tenuous gravity.
The rain lasted only two minutes or so. Then the character of the wind changed. It began to come in sudden, incredibly fierce gusts, followed by comparative calm.
Aileen mastered herself at last. She cast a quick, ashamed glance up at my face, still clinging to me.
"Think nothing of it," I said. "It's enough to make anyone cry."
"I feel such a baby," she said vehemently. "So weak and useless -- if you weren't here I wouldn't last five minutes in this."
Out of the fog of dust which was still streaming overhead a huge, gleaming shape dropped abruptly. We couldn't move. We waited to be crushed to death, hugging each other convulsively.
However, its size had deceived us. It crashed down fully fifty yards away, broke in two, and was swept away on the wings of the wind again. We didn't hear the sound of the crash at all. It was entirely dissipated by the storm.
"What was that?" asked Aileen.
"Lifeship," I said. I was thinking of how that ship had come safely from Earth to Mars, and had then been destroyed by a mere wind.
Suddenly the wind died. We were left feeling rather foolish, clinging tightly to each other as protection against a storm that no longer existed.
"Can that be the end?" Aileen whispered. It seemed natural to whisper in the sudden silence.
"Probably, but while we're here we're safe. Let's wait until the dust settles a little. I'll have a look at that gash of yours, now that there's water to -- "
"I'd rather you didn't," said Aileen quickly.
"As you like," I said equably.
"I'm sorry, I only meant -- "
I grinned. "I know." I prised myself out and sat on the rock. Aileen pulled herself up beside me.
"Bill, I should have known better," she said humbly. " Please see if you can do anything about that gash."
"Stop apologizing, Aileen." I smiled. "And don't make an issue of it. I don't think you thought I thought whatever it was. Come on, I'll carry you to the hospital."
"I can walk."
"Perhaps, but it isn't necessary. You realize that if I carry you I'm still only moving point six nine of what I used to have to tote around all the time on Earth?"
She chuckled. "That's so. All right, go ahead."
We lost our lightness of manner before we'd gone far. The ground was strewn with debris, human and otherwise. And a glance showed that the crops some of us had labored over were all destroyed.
"We can't say Mars gave us no warning," I said heavily. "There were light winds and strong winds. We should have been ready for an occasional much stronger wind."
I left her at the research station and went to the pit, refusing to look about me and see how much of our work was ruined.
The great storm killed 2590 people and injured 6000 more. It put us back where we had started as far as food was concerned, and killed so many cattle that the remainder would have to be watched and tended and bred very carefully if the species were not to die out. It showed that only buildings as strong as the research station itself were of any use on the surface of Mars. It put an end once and for all to all grumbles and complaints about working on permanent buildings. It demonstrated clearly to anyone and everyone how shaky our foothold on Mars still was, and how risky it was to relax until we had made it a lot more secure. It undermined the new laby system, since so many contracts which had been perfectly good the day before were now worthless.
In many ways the results of the gale were good. But no one would have wanted these things at such a cost. Besides, in one or two not so immediately obvious ways the results of the storm were not good.
One big change in plan was inevitable. Before this the general construction plan had been to construct fair-sized buildings around the research station and use the pit, the cave homes, more or less for temporary housing. The ground-level building was the important thing and the below-ground-level work stopgap and experimental.
After the storm the plan was reversed. Flats carved in solid rock, reinforced by concrete and steel, and below ground level, were obviously much safer than buildings on the
surface which, as had just been demonstrated, were very vulnerable while they were in course of construction. We would make a huge square a hundred feet deep, and build on only two sides. Later we could make it even bigger, and finally we should have a warm, sheltered garden all over the floor of the square, with comfortable, solid flats all around.
True, at first the flats would be makeshift. But that way we could develop in safety. By building on the surface we should always be at the mercy of a great storm like that first one.
Group 94 came through the storm unharmed. Once I knew that, I could help to assess the damage it had done with more equanimity.
Aileen wasn't seriously hurt. She was at the hospital only a few minutes. There were too many people more seriously hurt for the hospital staff to pay much attention to mere gashes and lumps on the head.
She came and tried to thank me for saving her life. Leslie interrupted her. "He enjoyed it, Aileen," she said. "Now he'll save your life any time he gets a chance, and kiss you again."
"He didn't kiss me!" Aileen protested.
"Why not?" Leslie asked me, puzzled.
"I don't like blondes," I told her.
6
When the first informal election was held, I was voted PL. The word "lieutenant" had never been a very good description -- we had been called lieutenants merely to give us some sort of pseudo-military authority over the people back on Earth whom we were taking, or not taking, to Mars. We now became known as party leaders. But since that phrase had political connotations we didn't like, the initials were generally used.
There was no opposition to my election as PL, not even from Morgan. Morgan had been quieter, rather to my surprise, since I whipped him. He never did anything to suggest that he regretted what he had done to Betty; in fact, there was all too little doubt that he was one of those compulsive sadists who could no more keep his hands off his girl than an addict could stop taking drugs. He and Betty still fought like wildcats, and of course Betty invariably came off worst. But there was never anything for which I could whip Morgan again. He always stopped short of doing her any real harm.
She would have a bruise on her face, and say it was nothing. Or there would be blue marks on her thin wrists. Once when she turned up with her arm and shoulder bandaged, I was going to go for Morgan again, whatever Betty said. But it transpired that this time he really had had nothing to do with it. She had been dashed against a wall by the winds.
The suspension of marriage didn't do their relations any good. Morgan didn't say outright that he was finished with Betty, but he made it clear that he didn't mind whether she stayed with him or not. Betty, poor kid, still loved the man.
I had guessed for some time that Ritchie was one of the leading profiteers, and that Morgan was tied up with him in some way. After the storm there was no pretense at all. Ritchie had done very well out of the storm, and didn't mind admitting it.
With so many people dying, the whole laby system had taken a knock, since a lot of the contracts in circulation were suddenly valueless. Ritchie apparently followed out the time-hallowed process of forcing the market as low as it would go, buying all he could and then letting the market rise again. I didn't follow any of his transactions in detail, but the general line was obvious.
"You're a reasonable fellow, Bill," he told me good-humoredly when I met him once. "You must know that when anything happens -- anything at all -- there's always something for a smart man to make out of it. Now I'll repeat an offer I made once before. If you'd like to come in with me -- "
"Ritchie," I said grimly, "you're a reasonable fellow too, in your own way, and you know damn well before you say any more that I'm not going to come in with you in any of your schemes."
Ritchie laughed as if I had made a very good joke. "That's what I like about you, Bill," he said warmly. "Cards always on the table, and no dealing off the bottom of the deck. Well, I'll be just as frank with you. From what I hear you saved Aileen's life, and I never like to feel I owe any man anything. So -- "
"So you offer me a chance you know I'm not going to take?"
"Yes," said Ritchie blandly. "You see, I think I'm making you a very good offer -- or I would, if you'd let me. If you don't like it, and turn it down, that's not my fault, is it?"
I couldn't help laughing at the insolence of this cheerful rogue.
"Call it quits, Ritchie," I said. "I like Aileen, despite the fact that she's your daughter. I'll save her life any time. How did she come to be your daughter, anyway?"
"She takes after her mother," Ritchie admitted.
You could say things like that to Ritchie. It wasn't possible to insult him. Not only did he never seem to bear malice, he never did bear malice. And yet nobody liked him. People are hard to please, aren't they?
Sometimes he reminded me of a bland, attentive maître d'hôtel who had far more money than the people he served so gracefully and assiduously. His manner must have helped him a lot. He would always, I imagined, give the impression of wanting to lend you money, wanting to help you. And only afterward would you realize how much helping you had helped him.
Sometimes, too, he reminded me of the beautiful, experienced women who have really learned the art of being escorted. Women like that let you take them out, pay enormous sums for their entertainment, wine, and dinner, take them home, kiss their hands, and leave you with the impression that it's been a wonderful privilege.
I kept finding and hearing of more and more people who in some way, to some limited extent, were in Ritchie's hands. Money was becoming, once more, a necessity, and Ritchie had money.
There were the work schemes, for example. Ritchie, still unable to work himself because of his broken leg, bought and sold labor, and nobody could do a thing about it. It was known that if you wanted a day off Ritchie could arrange it. Four or five other people would work for you, by Ritchie's arrangement, and you would sign what amounted to labies for your day's work, plus something. Even if the something was very small, there was no telling how little replacing you had actually cost Ritchie. The men who filled in for you might be heavy debtors to Ritchie, doing the job to escape a little interest.
Of course it was crazy for anyone to agree to such a thing. Most of the people who did so knew that. This was how it came about that anyone ever did.
You get into a fitful sleep at last about two hours before dawn. You are wakened with everyone else, lightheaded and gummy-eyed, stiff and sore, and you know you have a hard, heavy day's work in front of you. You think of going to the doctor, but unless you are genuinely ill that won't do you any good. You know there is a way you can have a day of glorious freedom, freedom to lie in bed if you like, go around and watch everyone else work if you like, go out and walk in the desert if you like. You shake your head and go out and work.
The next day the same temptation is before you. And every day, until at last you allow yourself just one day off. Ritchie arranges it, and it is glorious. All day you have no regrets. You are quite decided that as soon as possible you will redeem your labies . . . somehow.
That's how it happened. Ritchie was given a great chance by the inflexibility of our rules. They had to be inflexible. We couldn't allow people to do what they liked, when they liked, because there was far too much to be done. It had to be an all-out, enforced effort by everybody. Particularly after the storm had shown how acute and how immediate the problem of food and shelter was.
When the new council of PLs was elected, it met at once to decide a few more things which now had to be decided.
We passed a law that no one should be able to control more than a certain amount of laby cash at any one time. It wasn't a good law, and right away we had to make an exception in favor of the party leaders, the council members. Promptly Alec Ritchie was returned by his section as a PL.
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