"That's true enough, I suppose. And now that he's here he probably couldn't be replaced. Experience of a very special sort does things for a man. And to a man, if you like."
"I'm simply stressing that Mars is simply not a place for a kid of Freddy's age. When he goes roaming he gets his lungs choked with dust. He couldn't ride a bike on Mars—if he had a bike. Worst of all, he has no kids of his own age to play with. And now he comes on a trip like this. Does he hope to rescue the Ramsey girl all by himself?"
Corriston got up then. The three men who had been discussing Dr. Drever's son stood by the smoldering embers of a burnt out campfire. They were kindly looking men but a certain narrow-mindedness was stamped on the faces of at least two of them.
Corriston shrugged off his weariness and walked up to them. "Nonsense!" he said.
A startled look came into the eyes of the oldest, a grizzled scarecrow of a man whose beard descended almost to his waist. He was a Martian geologist, and a good one.
"Eh, Lieutenant. I was just going to ask you. Shouldn't we get started?"
"We should and we will," Corriston said. "But a good many men collapsed from the cold this morning. If we don't arrive at that ship in force, we may live to regret it. Where's Freddy? Have you seen him?"
The grizzled man raised his arm and pointed: "Over there," he said. "His coming along was just about the craziest thing I ever heard of."
Corriston walked across the churned up sand to where Freddy sat perched like a disconsolate gnome on a metal-rimmed food container shaped like an old-fashioned water barrel.
Dr. Drever's son was almost twelve, but he was small for his age and Corriston had seen boys of nine who were much huskier looking.