“Well, then,” shouted Rioz, “what do we do? I still say take it! Take the water!”
“And I say we can’t do that, Mario. Don’t you see that what you’re suggesting is the Earth way, the Grounder way? You’re trying to hold on to the umbilical cord that ties Mars to Earth. Can’t you get away from that? Can’t you see the Martian way?”
“No, I can’t. Suppose you tell me.”
“I will, if you’ll listen. When we think about the Solar System, what do we think about? Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, Phobos, and Deimos. There you are—seven bodies, that’s all. But that doesn’t represent 1 per cent of the Solar System. We Martians are right at the edge of the other 99 per cent. Out there, farther from the Sun, there’s unbelievable amounts of water!”
The others stared.
Swenson said uncertainly, “You mean the layers of ice on Jupiter and Saturn?”
“Not that specifically, but it is water, you’ll admit. A thousand-mile-thick layer of water is a lot of water.”
“But it’s all covered up with layers of ammonia or—or something, isn’t it?” asked Swenson. “Besides, we can’t land on the major planets.”
“I know that,” said Long, “but I haven’t said that was the answer. The major planets aren’t the only objects out there. What about the asteroids and the satellites? Vesta is a two-hundred-mile-diameter asteroid that’s hardly more than a chunk of ice. One of the moons of Saturn is mostly ice. How about that?”
Rioz said, “Haven’t you ever been in space, Ted?”