“He took the woman in the dark easily, for she was weak with terror and sedatives,” said Rumfoord. “It was a joyless union, satisfactory to no one but Mother Nature at her most callous.
“The lieutenant-colonel did not feel marvelous. He felt wretched. Foolishly, he turned on the light, hoping to find in the woman’s appearance some cause for pride in his brutishness,” said Rumfoord sadly. “Huddled on the bunk was a rather plain woman past thirty. Her eyes were red and her face was puffy with weeping, despair.
“The lieutenant-colonel, moreover, knew her. She was a woman that a fortune teller had promised him would one day bear his child,” said Rumfoord. “She bad been so high and proud the last time he saw her, and was now so crushed, that even the heartless lieutenant-colonel was moved.
“The lieutenant-colonel realized for the first time what most people never realize about themselves — that he was not only a victim of outrageous fortune, hilt one of outrageous fortune’s cruelest agents as well. The woman had regarded him as a pig when they met before. He had now proved beyond question that he was a pig.
“As the crew had predicted,” said Rumfoord, “the lieutenant-colonel was spoiled forever as a soldier. He became hopelessly engrossed in the intricate tactics of causing less rather than more pain. Proof of his success would be his winning of the woman’s forgiveness and understanding.
“When the space ship reached Mars, he learned from loose talk in the Reception Center Hospital that he was about to have his memory taken away. He thereupon wrote himself the first of a series of letters that listed the things he did not want to forget. The first letter was all about the woman he had wronged.
“He looked for her after his amnesia treatment, and found that she had no recollection of him. Not only that, she was pregnant, carrying his child. His problem, thereupon, became to win her love, and through her, to win the love of her child.
“This he attempted to do, Unk,” said Rumfoord, “not once, but many times. He was consistently defeated. But it remained the central problem of his life — probably because he himself had come from a shattered family.
“What defeated him, Unk,” said Rumfoord, “was a congenital coldness on the part of the woman, and a system of psychiatry that took the ideals of Martian society as noble common sense. Each time the man wobbled his mate, utterly humorless psychiatry straightened her out — made her an efficient citizen again.
“Both the man and his mate were frequent visitors. to the psychiatric wards of their respective hospitals. And it is perhaps food for thought,” said Rumford, “that this supremely frustrated man was the only Martian to write a philosophy, and that this supremely self-frustrating woman was the only Martian to write a poem.”
Boaz arrived at the company mother ship from the town of Phoebe, where he had gone to look for Unk. “God damn — ” he said to Rumfoord, “everybody go and leave without us?” He was on a bicycle.
He saw Unk. “God damn, buddy,” he said to Unk, “boy — you ever put your buddy through hell. I mean! How you get here?”
“Military police,” said Unk.
“The way everybody gets everywhere,” said Rumford lightly.
“We got to catch up, buddy,” said Boaz. “Them boys ain’t going to attack, if they don’t have a mother ship along. What they going to fight for?”
“For the privilege of being the first army that ever died in a good cause,” said Rumford.
“How’s that?” said. Boaz.
“Never mind,” said Rumford. “You boys just get on board, close the airlock, push the on button. You’ll catch up before you know it. Everything’s all fully automatic.”
Unk and Boaz got on board.
Rumfoord held open the outer door of the airlock. “Boaz — ” he said, “that red button on the center shaft there — that’s the on button.”
“I know,” said Boaz.
“Unk — ” said Rumfoord.
“Yes?” said Unk emptily.
“That story I told you — the love story? I left out one thing.”
“That so?” said Unk.
“The woman in the love story — the woman who had that man’s baby?” said Rumfoord. “The woman who was the only poet on Mars?”