"Mr. Whiting's right," Joan said. "After all it isn't his fault—"
"Another thing," Bruce Whiting went on. "I'm expecting a half-trac out here tomorrow with some supplies. If you and your family wanted to, there's no reason why we couldn't all ride back with him.... Maybe we could get this thing straightened out then and still be friends."
Claude flicked a look toward the far-off hills that were haloed by the last rays of a strange sun. Within moments it would be dark. And a few yards away a woman threw another log on the fire and the pungent aroma of boiling coffee drifted across his nostrils.
"I'm hungry," Billy repeated.
Claude held out his hand.
"I'm sorry," he said. "As you say: this isn't our fault. We're just caught in the middle."
They ate picnic-style, off plastic dishes, while Bruce Whiting kept up a continuous stream of conversation, aided from time to time by his comely wife.
The Whiting's story was a familiar one. He'd been with an advertising agency when the colonization urge had struck him.... That was ten years ago.... He'd talked it over with his wife, and together they'd weighed the chances of surviving the rigid tests that eliminated 97% of the applicants.
The story had a pattern you could play by ear. Just another man, and another woman, and another boy now in his teens, who'd grown tired of the struggle for survival in a world that begrudged a man the space occupied by his own body.