Harry Decker and Jimmy Baldwin and now Hugh Nixon. Three men had died here on Mars. He was the only one left. And he probably would die, too, for no man could for long breathe that Martian air and live.
What was it Hugh had said that first day?
"It plays hell with the tissues of your lungs."
He stared around him, saw the interminable red deserts and the scarlet patches of Martian lilies, nodding in the breeze. Saw the humming bugs flashing in the pale sunlight. Saw the shimmer of the mighty building that had no doors or windows.
His lungs were aching now and his throat was raw. It was harder and harder to breathe.
He knelt in the sand and lifted the blackened body. Cradling it in his arms, he staggered along.
"I have to make another cross," he said.
Far overhead, in the depths of space, twinkled the blue planet whose life would never know the slavery of the emotionless race of a dying world.