He made an impassioned speech and stepped down. Others followed, but he was not very attentive to their words. Hilda crept to him, unobserved in the excitement. She said, "Oh, John, my hand can be healed—Now I will be proud to marry you—as you asked me three years ago, if you still want me...."
"Why, you dumb Bunny! As if a bum flipper had anything to do with that...." He took her in his arms. They did not even vote when the hands were called for—or know that the decision had been made....
When the supply ship arrived, a year and a half later, there were no signs of the colony left. Spread around on the sand were various artificial limbs, crutches, spectacles, hearing devices, and bits of clothing, scattered in between many bleached and weather beaten bones....
The ship's crew gathered up these medical relics as proof and sadly turned away. The captain thought it rather a pity since the ship had been sent to bring the sick ones home, in response to a wave of indignation aroused two years before by Hilda's broadcast from the District Hospital.
They carried a few of the bones back, carelessly scooped up by the electric shovel that gathered the crutches and other paraphernalia.
An obscure scientist's assistant at Johns Hopkins tried to arouse excitement by claiming that these were not human bones, but from anthropoid apes—However, there was another war brewing, and nobody would listen to him.