At last the young Martian turned and spoke to them, but mostly to Mary—"How much do you love your native planet? Would you be willing to stay with us—all of you to be healed and made well, and serve to invigorate the stock of the Mars men?"
There was a buzz of excitement and argument. Most of the Earthmen who had not seen the hidden Martian city were violently opposed, but a few were too sick to care—and many remembered that they were lost anyway, when the atomic power jackets should be exhausted. John stood close to Molaee and looked at her questioningly.
"Don't stay for my sake, John," she said sadly, "our instincts draw us to each other, but our minds are a whole generation apart. We would have constant misunderstandings. Remember, I am as old as Zingar."
He hesitated a moment, then wrote, "But Mary and Zingar are planning to be married."
"That is their business," she replied looking at Mary. "Perhaps it is a reasonable chance to take when the husband is the older mentality, but I don't want a mental child for a husband. Besides I—I have been remembering Nogar, my former lover—before I saw you."
Their isolated dialogue was only a small murmur in the vocal excitement of the throng of Earth people, which suddenly quieted as Major Mattson boomed over the crowd with his megaphone—"Well, shall we vote on it?"
But Zingar raised his hand and cried, "Wait!—My father should speak first."
The old man sat painfully up in his bed and spoke into the microphone of the old amplifying set so that his sibilant whispering voice echoed the broken accents down the high vaulted ceilings of the great cave space.
"Listen to me well, O selected people of a youthful race—This violence has been a vast folly. I should have realized before.... My sense of the aesthetic was offended by your ugliness, especially by the sick and crippled among you, so that I did not realize your one great virtue which cancels all the rest. I have observed the co-operative efficiency of your defenses, especially the strange spirit of sacrifice in the little band who came out to trick us. We were not ready for that, for we have no such spirit of unselfishness among us. It is a virtue that Mars needs. Your very handicaps have taught you a lesson of group action—a lesson of inestimable worth. We need every one of your unique personalities in our community life. It will be a simple thing to heal you of your diseases, and to prolong your lives. The memory of your sufferings will give new youth and a new spirit to Mars—life, perhaps even prove a biological salvation. Stay with us—we wish you well...."
The old man fell back exhausted—and closed his eyes. John leaped to the platform, and cried to the several hundred men and women before him, "That settles it! I'm for staying...."