Winters did not answer. Miles away, safe from the thundering rocket blasts, the glassite dome of Kahora, Trade City for Mars, rose jewel-like out of the red sand. The little sun stared wearily down and the ancient hills considered it, and the old, old wandering wind passed over it, and it seemed as though the planet bore Kahora and its space-port with patience, as though it were a small local infection that would soon be gone.
He had forgotten Johnny Niles. He had forgotten everything but his own dark thoughts. The young officer studied him with covert pity, and he did not know it.
Burk Winters was a big man, and a tough man, tempered by years of deep-space flying. The same glare of naked light that had burned his skin so dark had bleached his hair until it was almost white, and just in the last few months his grey eyes seemed to have caught and held a spark of that pitiless radiance. The easy good nature was gone out of them, and the lines that laughter had shaped around his mouth had deepened now into bitter scars.
A big man, a hard man, but a man who was no longer in control of himself. All during the voyage out from Earth he had chain-smoked the little Venusian cigarets that have a sedative effect. He was smoking one now, and even so he could not keep his hands steady nor stop the everlasting tic in his right cheek.
"Burk." Johnny's voice came to him from a great distance. "Burk, it's none of my business, but...." He hesitated, then blurted out, "Do you think Mars is good for you, now?"
Quite abruptly, Winters said, "Take good care of the Starflight, Johnny. Good bye."
He went away, down the ramp. The pilot stared after him.
The Second Officer came up to Johnny. "That guy has sure gone to pieces," he said.
Johnny nodded. He was angry, because he had come up under Winters and he loved him.
"The damn fool," he said. "He shouldn't have come here." He looked out over the mocking immensity of Mars and added, "His girl was lost out there, somewhere. They never found her body."