He smiled through the tangle of his unkempt beard, an almost savage gleam of white teeth in the shadows. "I'll forget, won't I? I've forgotten so much already, you see." He crushed the credits in grimy fingers. "This, too. But ... I thank you ... and you'd better go. Beachcombers, even on Mars, aren't any more savory than the old kind on Earth, and I'd not have those others talking, Miss. I'll remember Nancy and I'll remember her friend; you forget Jeff Thorne, unless to point a moral to your students."
She smiled, holding out a hand, pink-palmed and clean. "Not that, Mr. Thorne. Goodby."
Instinctively he met her grasp, using the hand which he clutched her money. For a moment he paused, then slowly let his hand drop back to his side.
"Not that way, either, Miss ... Miss Thurland. Just goodby."
He watched her walk swiftly up the beach, a slender, graceful figure in the bright sunlight. Sleek and clean and decent, copper-tinted hair glittering about her small head until she put on her hat. She did not pause or look back. And then she was gone.
A fresh shadow fell across the sand. Thorne, breaking in upon his moody abstraction, turned with a start to face a tall Martian native who stood impassively watching him. A slim spear glittered and twinkled in the moving foliage above the man's grey-polled head.
A smile spread vacuously across Thorne's countenance, loosening his lean jaw and dulling his eyes. He held out the credits. "Look, Hanu! Money! We can send one of your young men now to the City. I shall have it again."
The Martian did not stir. From the thick grey mane of hair mantling his lean and apish countenance two great unblinking eyes stared disconcertingly at the bedraggled Earthman he had fed and sheltered this past year. The bony figure on its thin legs did not seem to breathe, so still he remained, and Thorne shambled forward in slow alarm, mumbling a question. The Martian evaded him with silken ease, but as he stepped aside his thin arm stretched out, prehensile fingers extended like claws. They struck the notes from Thorne's lax hand.
"Here! What the devil, Hanu?" Indignation stirred the returning lethargy gripping the derelict, and he came up with an angry jerk. The long fish-spear dropped, the razored blade resting across the fallen money as if to slice it in two. The Martian's voice was thin, but gravely dignified.
"No, Thorne. No man goes to the City."