"I couldn't understand a thing. Nothing seemed right. No purpose to any of it. No apparent reason. Only one thing I could understand. Over on the other side of the building I found the cradle that is used to shoot the rockets to Earth. I've watched that done."
"But what happened?" asked Scott. "Why didn't you come back? What happened to the ship?"
"We had no fuel," said Hugh.
Scott nodded his head.
"A meteor in space."
"Not that," Hugh told him, "Harry simply turned the petcocks, let our gasoline run into the sand."
"Good Lord! Was he crazy?"
"That's exactly what he was," Hugh declared. "Batty as a bedbug. Touch of space madness. I felt sorry for him. He cowered like a mad animal, beaten by the sense of loneliness and space. He was afraid of shadows. He got so he didn't act like a man. I was glad for him when he died."
"But even a crazy man would want to get back to Earth!" protested Scott.
"It wasn't Harry," Hugh explained. "It was the Martians, I am sure. Whatever or wherever they are, they probably have intelligences greater than ours. It would be no feat for them, perhaps, to gain control of the brain of a demented man. They might not be able to dominate us, but a man whose thought processes were all tangled up by space madness would be an easy mark for them. They could make him do and think whatever they wanted him to think or do. It wasn't Harry who opened those petcocks, Scott. It was the Martians."