"I know," she replied hotly. "_I'm_ the one who blunders. _I'm_ the
fool, for arguing with you, when I realize that it's impossible to
convince a marak addict."
"That's it," he nodded, and chuckled again. But that wasn't quite it.
For he was also chuckling at his plan. She had thought him unable to
tackle a real problem. Well, he would tackle one tonight. Then she
would simply adopt his point of view, and she would no longer be
unhappy. After she had accepted the solution he had provided, she would
wonder how she could ever have opposed him.
He fell into one of his dozes and hardly noticed her glaring at him.
When he came out of it at last, it was to hear her say, "We have to
stay alive as long as possible. For the sake of the lighthouse."
"Of course, my dear. I don't dispute that at all."
"And the longer we stay alive, the more chance there is that some ship
will pick us up."
"Oh, no, there's no chance at all," he asserted cheerfully. "You know
that as well as I do. No use deceiving yourself, my love."
That, he observed to himself, was the way of non-addicts. They couldn't
look facts in the face. They had to cling to a blind and silly optimism
which no facts justified.
_He_ knew that there was no hope. _He_ was able to review the facts
calmly, judiciously, to see the inevitability of their dying--and to
take pleasure even in that.
He reviewed them for her now. "Let us see, sweetheart, whether I've
lost my ability to analyze a situation. We're here with our pretty
little lighthouse in the middle of a group of asteroids between Mars
and Earth. Ships have been wrecked here, and our task is to prevent
further wrecks. The lighthouse sends out a standard high-frequency
beam whose intensity and phase permit astrogators to estimate their
distance and direction from us. Ordinarily, there's nothing for us to
do. But on the rare occasions when the beam fails--"
"That will be the end."
"On those occasions," he continued, unruffled by her interruption, "I
am supposed to leave my cosy little shelter, so thoughtfully equipped
with all the comforts of Earth or Mars, and make repairs as rapidly as
possible. Under the usual conditions, lighthousekeeping is a boring
task. In fact, it has been known to drive people insane. That's why
it's generally assigned to happily married couples like us, who are
accustomed to living quietly, without excitement."
"And that," she added bitterly, "is why even happily married couples
are usually relieved after one year."
"But, darling," he said, his tone cheerful, "you mustn't blame anyone.
Who would have expected that a maverick meteor would come at us and
displace us from our orbit? And who would have expected that the meteor
would have collided first with the outer asteroids, and picked up a
cargo of--those?"
He gestured toward the window, where a shadow had momentarily paused.
By the light that shone through, he could see that the creature was
relatively harmless-looking. It had what appeared to be a round,
humorous face whose unhumorous intentions would be revealed only at
the moment of the kill. The seeming face was actually featureless, for
it was not a face at all. It had neither eyes, nor nose, nor mouth.
The effect of features was given by the odd blend of colors. Almost
escaping notice because of their unusual position and their dull brown
hue were the stomach fangs, in neat rows which could be extended and
retracted like those of a snake.
He noticed that Louise had shuddered again, and said, in the manner
of a man making conversation, "Interesting, aren't they? They're rock
breathers, you know. They need very little oxygen, and they extract
that from the silicates and other oxygen-containing compounds of the
rock."
"Don't talk about them."
"All right, if you don't want me to. But about us--you see, my dear,
no one expected us to be lost. And even if the Lighthouse Service has
started to look for us, it'll take a long time to find us."
"We have food, water, air. If not for those beasts, we'd last until a
rescue ship appeared."
"But even a rescue ship wouldn't be able to reach us unless we kept the
beam going. So far, we've been lucky. It's really functioned remarkably
well. But sooner or later it'll go out of order, and then I'll have to
go out and fix it. You agree to that, don't you, Louise, dear?"