"Tell Louis that his painting—"
"Louis?" yelled West. "Louis who? What about—"
The whisper came again. "Tell him ... someday ... he'll paint a wrong place and then...."
Gently West laid the man back on the floor and stepped away. The whisky bottle still rocked to and fro beneath a chair where it had come to rest.
Something glinted at the head of the cot and West walked to where it hung. It was a watch, a shining watch, polished with years of care. It swung slowly from a leather thong tied to the rod that formed the cot's head, where a man could reach out in the dark and read it.
West took it in his hand and turned it over, saw the engraving that ran across its back. Bending low, he read the inscription in the feeble light.
To Walter J. Darling, from class of '16,
Mars Polytech.
West straightened, understanding and disbelief stirring in his mind.
Walter J. Darling, that huddle on the floor? Walter J. Darling, one of the solar system's greatest biologists, dead in this filthy hut? Darling, teacher for years at Mars Polytechnical Institute, that shrunken, liquor-sodden corpse in shoddy underwear?