"But why did you stay, too?" Wales demanded. Martha looked at him in surprise.
"Somebody had to take care of Lee. I wasn't going to Mars until he went. It was lonesome, after everybody left Castletown. Lee said we'd soon go, ourselves. But then—he changed. He began to seem terribly worried about something, terribly afraid."
"We've all been afraid," Wales said somberly, but she shook her head.
"It wasn't the crash, it wasn't Doomsday, Lee was afraid of. It was something else. He said he feared all Earth's people weren't going to get away. He said there were men who didn't want everyone to get away, men who wanted to see a lot of people trapped here when Doomsday comes!"
Wales was electrified out of his headachy grogginess by her statement. He grasped her wrist. "Martha, Lee said that? Who did he say they were—those who wanted to trap millions into staying here?"
Again she shook her head. "He didn't say who they were. He said he wasn't sure, it was only a suspicion. But it worried him. He went to New York once to see John Fairlie about—the regional Evacuation Marshal."
Wales thought hard. "Yes. Fairlie told me he suspected some deliberate, secret effort going on to induce millions of people to stay on Earth till it was too late. Either Fairlie got that idea from Lee, or Lee got it from him—" He broke off, then asked, "Did Lee ever talk about the Brotherhood of Atonement?"
Martha nodded. "Oh, yes, quite often. We've been afraid of them, ever since everyone else left Castletown."
Again, Wales was astonished. "What do you know about that Brotherhood, Martha?"