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When Ha as a native Martian Now there were two-hundred-odd babies whose grandfathers had been born on Mars-native in the third generation

When he had come as a boy in his teens, Mars had been scarcely rounded spaceships connected by sealed underground tunnels Through the years, he had seen buildings grow and burroidely, thrusting blunt snouts up into the thin, unbreathable at up into which spaceships and their loads could be shole He had seen the e in the Martian crust, while the population of Mars grew fro memories-they and the even dimmer memories induced by the presence of this Earthotten scraps of thought about a soft-orld that was as kind and gentle to mankind as the mother&039;s womb

The Earthman seemed fresh from that womb Not very tall, not very lean; in fact, distinctly plump Dark hair with a neat little wave in it, a neat little ht in style and as fresh and neatly turned as plastek could be

Sankov&039;s own clothes were of Martian manufacture, serviceable and clean, but y and lined, his hair was pure white, and his Adam&039;s apple wobbled when he talked

The Earthby, member of Earth&039;s General Assembly Sankov was Martian Commissioner

Sankov said, "This all hits us hard, Assemblyman"

"It&039;s hit most of us hard, too, Commissioner"

"Uh-huh Can&039;t honestly say then that I can make it out Of course, you understand, I don&039;t make out that I can understand Earth ways, for all that I was born there Mars is a hard place to live, Assemblyman, and you have to understand that It takes a lot of shipping space just to bring us food, water, and raw materials so we can live There&039;s not rams can&039;t reach Mars, except for about a month when Earth is in conjunction, and even then nobody has much time to listen

"My office gets a weekly summary film from Planetary Press

Generally, I don&039;t have time to pay attention to it Maybe you&039;d call us provincial, and you&039;d be right When so like this happens, all we can do is kind of helplessly look at each other"

Digby said slowly, "You can&039;t mean that your people on Mars haven&039;t heard of Hilder&039;s anti-Waster can"

"No, can&039;t exactly say that There&039;s a young Scavenger, son of a good friend of mine who died in space"-Sankov scratched the side of his neck doubtfully-,"who s like that He catches video broadcasts when he&039;s out in space and he listened to this man Hilder Near as I can make out, that was the first talk Hilderfellow came to me with that Naturally, I didn&039;t take him very serious I kept an eye on the Planetary Press films for a while after that, but there wasn&039;t much mention of Hilder and what there was made hiby, "it all seemed quite a joke When it started"

Sankov stretched out a pair of long legs to one side of his desk and crossed them at the ankles "Seems to u at soht to me when this committee arrived

"Seems that Earth has four hundred million cubic hs four and a half billion tons That&039;s a lot of water Noe use soht Most of the thrust is inside Earth&039;s gravitational field, and that means the water thrown out finds its way back to the oceans Hilder doesn&039;t figure that in When he says a ht, he&039;s a liar It&039;s less than a hundred thousand tons

"Suppose, noe have fifty thousand flights a year We don&039;t, of course; not even fifteen hundred But let&039;s say there are fifty thousand I figure there&039;s going to be considerable expansion as tihts, one cubic mile of water would be lost to space each year That means that in a million years, Earth would lose one quarter of 1 per cent of its total water supply!"

Digby spread his hands, palms upward, and let theures like that in their caht a tremendous, emotion-filled drive with cold mathematics This man Hilder has invented a name, &039;Wasters&039; Slowly he has built this na of brutal, profit-seeking wretches raping Earth for their own i riddled with the owned by thee man He knows all too hat selfish men can do to Earth&039;s resources He knohat happened to Earth&039;s oil during the Time of Troubles, for instance, and the way top-soil was ruined

"When a farht, he doesn&039;t care that the aht isn&039;t a droplet in a fog as far as Earth&039;s over-all water supply is concerned Hilder has given hiest possible consolation for disaster He isn&039;t going to give that up for a diet of figures"

Sankov said, "That&039;s where I get puzzled Maybe it&039;s because I don&039;t kno things work on Earth, but it&039;seehty farmers there As near as I could make out from the news suoes along with a few far thes as worried huht will stress increasingly the light, nonferrous alloys The various miners&039; unions worry about extraterrestrial coet aluminum to build a prefab is certain that it is because the aluy who&039;s an anti-Waster because he can&039;t get a governrant to cover his excavations He&039;s convinced that all govern into rocketry research and space medicine and he resents it"

Sankov said, "That doesn&039;t sound like Earth people are much different from us here on Mars But what about the General Asseby smiled sourly "Politics isn&039;t pleasant to explain Hilder introduced this bill to set up a coht Maybe three fourths or ation as an intolerable and useless extension of bureaucracy-which it is But then how could any legislator be against a h he had soh he were hi fro such accusations, and whether true or not, they would be a powerful factor with the voters in the next election The bill passed

"And then there ca the ainst Hilder shied away from membership, which would haveRe on the side lines would et for Hilder The result is that I am the only member of the committee who is outspokenly anti-Hilder and it may cost me re-election"

Sankov said, "I&039;d be sorry to hear that, Asseh Mars didn&039;t have as ht we had We wouldn&039;t like to lose one But if Hilder wins out, what&039;s he after, anyway?"

"I should think," said Digby, "that that is obvious He wants to be the next Global Co-ordinator"

"Think he&039;llhappens to stop him, he will"

"And then what? Will he drop this Waster can then?"

"I can&039;t say I don&039;t know if he&039;s laid his plans past the Co-ordinacy Still, if you want n and otten out of hand"

Sankov scratched the side of his neck "All right In that case, I&039;ll ask you for some advice What can we folks on Mars do?

You know Earth You know the situation We don&039;t Tell us what to do"