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"The thing I have to say to you is" he said

"Yes?"

"Good-by!"

And he was out the door and into his car before she could scream

She ran and stood on the curb as he swung the car about

"Walter Griff, co up her arms

"Gripp," he corrected her

"Gripp!" she shouted

The car whirled away down the silent street, regardless of her stos The exhaust from it fluttered the white dress she cruht, and the car vanished out onto the desert and away into blackness

He drove all night and all day for three nights and days Once he thought he saw a car following, and he broke into a shivering sweat and took another highway, cutting off across the lonely Martian world, past little dead cities, and he drove and drove for a week and a day, until he had put ten thousand e Then he pulled into a ss, where there were soht and restaurants to sit in, ordering meals And he's lived there ever since, with two deep freezes packed with food to last hiars to last ten thousand days, and a good bed with a soft mattress

And when once in a while over the long years the phone rings--he doesn't answer

April 2026: THE LONG YEARS

Whenever the wind cah the sky, he and his small family would sit in the stone hut and warm their hands over a wood fire The ould stir the canal waters and almost blow the stars out of the sky, but Mr Hathaould sit contented and talk to his wife, and his ould reply, and he would speak to his two daughters and his son about the old days on Earth, and they would all answer neatly

It was the twentieth year after the Great War Mars was a tomb, planet Whether or not Earth was the same was a matter forMartian

nights