The width and breadth of his own land, that section of Mars where he had stood twenty years ago and watched with hungry eyes, and then ever since had sweated and cried and suffered to own. His land, with its silent rolling hills and quiet green valleys. With its sweet sloping clearing where he would place his house, the rippling brook singing softly nearby.
The only place he had seen in any system that had the peace of it, the magnificence of it. His land. Paid for finally and bound by legal protection, waiting for him. And here he was, letting the reward for those twenty years drift away by sitting beside a crazy, over-confident infant, who was sure as hell going to crash this rocket.
When the crash came, however, Hurtz was still surprised somehow, but only until he fell into the depthless darkness.
When he awoke he saw that the ship rested at an odd angle. One whole side of the compact cabin had become a gaping open tear that looked away to the horizon of this new world. Hurtz had a thin cut over his left eye and a collection of stinging bruises, nothing more serious.
Jones, on the other hand, appeared to have been smashed brutally about the legs, and from where Hurtz lay he could see the ugly cut in the boy's head and the unnatural angle of the boy's right arm.
"Jones?" he said to the motionless form, and then with effort he crawled to the boy who was still clamped tightly into the swivel seat before the instrument panel.
His hands searched and found two broken bones in the arm and leg. The cut in the boy's head had obviously touched bone. Hurtz gathered medicine, bandages and splints from the first-aid compartment. He swabbed, bound, compressed, and covered the wounds of the boy. Then with teeth tight together he set the two bones with the rough skill of practical experience. When the splints were bound he loosened the boy's body from the binding straps and carried him to the rear bunk space of the cabin.
He tested the boy's pulse and regularity of breathing, then injected enough of relieving drug into the boy's blood to keep the full impact of pain away from his senses.
Hurtz returned to the front of the cabin to look over the damaged radio. Tentative inspection told him he could make sufficient repairs to send out a help call. But first, he knew, he would have to make an estimate of their position on this strange planet.