He announced over the intercom that a serious accident had occurred. The air-lock doors had become unfastened in some mysterious fashion and ten previous gallons of waste water which was being distilled for irrigation purposes for the garden had escaped as steam.
"It will be absolutely necessary for us to find water on Mars," he added. "Otherwise only half our crew, maybe only two of us, will be able to return to the earth. That is all."
It was too damned much, if you ask me. Later, when Axel and I were alone, I voiced my concern and suspicions.
"It was no accident," said Axel bluntly.
"Right," I said. No one had been in the main cabin at the time, about an hour before, when the water escaped. Gail had been asleep in her compartment. I'd been in the machinery room checking the air and water-cycling equipment. Axel had been in the control room, and Joel had been in the galley preparing food for the rest of us. "Maybe he thinks we're stupid," I added. "Anybody could figure out he did it."
"On the log it will look just as Spartan says," Axel told us. "You and I may never live to contradict it. For that matter, neither may Joel."
"Murder?"
Axel nodded his head. "I think he has been planning for a long time to return alone."
"But surely—surely not without Gail?"
"If you were Spartan and thought as he did, what would you do? Gail is the one witness who could endanger him by contradicting his story."