Boaz and Unk had separated after one Earthling year together in the space ship. In that first year together, it had become clear to both of them that they weren’t going to get out unless something or somebody came and got them out.
That had been clear, even though the creatures on the walls continued to spell out new messages emphasizing the fairness of the test to which Unk. and Boaz were being subjected, the ease with which they might escape, if only they would think a little harder, if they would only think a little more intricately.
“THINK!” the creatures would say.
Unk and Boaz separated after Unk went temporarily insane. Unk had tried to murder Boaz. Boaz had come into the space ship with a harmonium, which was exactly like all the other harmoniums, and he’d said, “Ain’t he a cute little feller, Unk?”
Unk had gone for Boaz’s throat.
Unk was naked when be found the dog tracks. The lichen green uniform and black fiber boots of the Martian Assault Infantry had been scoured to threads and dust by the touch of stone.
The dog tracks did not excite Unk. Unk’s soul wasn’t filled with the music of sociability or the light of hope when he saw a warm-blooded creature’s tracks, saw the tracks of man’s best friend. And he still had very little to say to himself when the tracks of a well-shod man joined those of the dog.
Unk was at war with his environment. He had come to regard his environment as being either malevolent or cruelly mismanaged. His response was to fight it with the only weapons at hand — passive resistance and open displays of contempt.
The footprints seemed to Unk to be the opening moves in one more fat-headed game his environment wanted to play. He would follow the tracks, but lazily, without excitement. He would follow them simply because he had nothing else scheduled for the time.
He would follow them.
He would see where they went.
His progress was knobby and ramshackle. Poor Unk had lost a lot of weight, and a lot of hair, too. He was aging fast. His eyes felt hot and his skeleton felt rickety.
Unk never shaved on Mercury. When his hair and beard got so long as to be a bother, he would hack away wads of thatch with a butcherknife.
Boaz shaved every day. Boaz gave himself a haircut twice an Earthling week with a barber kit from the space ship.
Boaz, twelve years younger than Unk, had never felt better in his life. He had gained weight in the caves of Mercury — and serenity, too.
Boaz’s home vault was furnished with a cot, a table, two chairs, a punching bag, a mirror, dumbbells, a tape recorder, and a library of recorded music on tape consisting of eleven hundred compositions.
Boaz’s home vault had a door on it, a round boulder with which he could plug the vault’s mouth. The door was necessary, since Boaz was God Almighty to the harmoniums. They could locate him by his heartbeat.
Had he slept with his door open, he would have awakened to find himself pinned down by hundreds of thousands of his admirers. They would have let him up only when his heart stopped beating.
Boaz, like Unk, was naked. But he still had shoes.
His genuine leather shoes had held up gorgeously.
True — Unk had walked fifty miles to every mile walked by Boaz, but Boaz’s shoes had not merely held up.
They looked as good as new.
Boaz wiped, waxed, and shined them regularly. He was shining them now, The door of his vault was blocked by the boulder.
Only four favored harmoniums were inside with him. Two were wrapped about his upper arms. One was stuck to his thigh. The fourth, an immature harmonium only three inches long, clung to the inside of his left wrist, feeding on Boaz’s pulse. –
When Boaz found a harmonium he loved more than all the rest, that was what he did — let the creature feed on his pulse.
“You like that?” he said in his thoughts to the lucky harmonium. “Ain’t that nice?”