"Sure," Corriston said, settling down at the side of a big, awkward-looking man with red hair. "Sure, I understand. Take it easy. We're all in this together."
"We've got eighty-seven miles of desert to cross. It's going to be tough. Have you seen the fortress Ramsey built to protect himself?"
"There are twenty-five square miles of fortified defenses--photoelectric eye installations. They spot you when you're a half-mile away. Try to storm those installations even with a dozen armed tractors, and you'll be pulverized into dust. Try to storm them on foot with the most formidable of energy weapons, and you'll be electrocuted. You'll hang suspended on barbed wire. Think that over, Lieutenant."
"I've thought it over," Corriston said. "We won't have to storm the fortress unless they've taken Ramsey's daughter there, or if Ramsey himself is in danger. And if he is in danger, he'll welcome our help. We're going to the ship first and there are only two men on the ship."
"But they've got plenty of ammunition, haven't they? They've got the ship's military installations. Anyway you slice it, it's a dangerous gamble."
"I never thought it was anything else," Corriston said.
Corriston woke up to the hum of human voices, the soft whisper of the wind, the gentle stirring of sand. He awoke to coldness and brightness, to sunlight that dazzled him with its brightness.
Corriston remembered then. Not everything at once, but just the first thing. There were no guideposts. That was always the first thing to remember when you woke up from a brief, twenty-minute sleep on Mars.
In islands scoured by trade winds and bright with blown sea spray a man does not talk of traveling east or west, and even familiar streets are no longer given names or marked by intersections. A man talks instead of walking into the wind, of setting his course by the north star, of moving straight into the teeth of the gale or huddling for shelter beneath a high chalk cliff where all directions converge in a hollow drumming that has neither beginning nor end. It was that way on Mars. It would always be that way, it could never change.
Just lie very still and listen, listen to the voices of men who are risking their lives to help you. Listen and be grateful; listen and be proud.