That was the line of talk. You heard it plenty, in those days. You couldn't blame the guys for it, either. A fourth of us down with Martian sickness, the little grave markers clotting up the valley beyond the ridge, rations getting thin, medicine running low, everything running low, all of us watching the sky for rockets that never came. There'd been a little hitch back on Earth, Colonel Nichols explained. (He was our C.O. now (BSPGeneral Rayen had died.) There was a little delay, but the rockets would be on their way soon, we'd get relief, we just had to hold on. Holding onthat's what we were doing. Nights we'd sit in the Quonset and listen to Lassen coughing in his bunk, and it seemed like wind-giants, cold-giants, were bawling and laughing around our little huddle of shelters.
"Damn it, if they're not coming, why don't we go home?" Walter said. "We've still got the four rocketsthey could take us all back."
Breck's serious face got graver. "Look, Walter, there's too much of that stuff being talked around. Lay off."
"Can you blame the men for talking it? We're not story- book heroes. If they've forgotten about us back on Earth, why do we just sit and take it?"
"We have to," Breck said. "Three will-come."
I've always thought that it wouldn't have happened, what did happen, if we hadn't had that falSe alarm. The one that set the whole camp wild that night, with guys shouting,
"Three's here! The rockets landed over west of Rock Ridgel" Only when they charged out there, they found they hadn't seen rockets landing at all, but a little shower of tiny meteors burning themselves up as they fell.
It was the disappointment that did it, I think. I can't say for sure, because that same day was the day I conked out with Martian sickness, and the ffoor came up and hit me and I woke up in the bunk, with somebody giving me a hypo, and my head big as a balloon. I wasn't clear out, it was only a touch of it, but it was enough to make everything foggy, and I didn't know about the mutiny that was boiling up until I woke up once with Breck leaning over me and saw he wore a gun and an M.P. brassard now.
When I asked him how come, he said there'd been so much wild talk about grabbing the four rockets and going home that the M;P. force had been doubled and Nichols had issued stern warnings.
"Walter?" I said, and Breck nodded. "He's a leader and he'll get hit with a court-martial when this is over. The blasted idiot!"