"I won't, Peter. I'll show him."
"I'd rather take a whipping than see you cry. Do you want me to take a whipping?"
"No, Peter."
"Then let's go."
Peter and Susan turned, and went racing across the hot red sand to the prefabricated metal shack which they shared with their parents when Martian archeology wasn't waging relentless warfare on the domestic instincts of Dr. Kenneth Ashley, and his gifted, scholarly wife.
"Just wait until papa gets back!" Susan whispered, stopping to loosen her oxygen mask at the door of the shack. "Papa doesn't know how mean Mr. Caxton gets when he's been drinking."
"He doesn't have to drink to be mean," Peter reminded her. "Next time we go exploring I'll play dumb."
Peter's voice came out thin, and muffled through his oxygen mask. But there was a ring of angry defiance in it. "He doesn't know how an explorer feels anyway. He's awfully educated, but Mr. Walgreen says you can't just pop knowledge into your mouth like a pill, and swallow it."
Self-portrait of Peter. A boy with shining eyes, and curly dark hair who loves knowledge for its own sake. Knowledge and a lot of other things, eh, Peter? The wind ruffling the tumbled dunes, the bone-white summits of the buried Martian cities, and, just for good measure, the dawn with its banners of fire.
Why shouldn't an eager, inquiring boy of ten see a few strange clawmarks in the sand? What right had Mr. Caxton or anyone else to disillusion and shake the faith of a budding explorer in the strange, the incredible?