"No, you wouldn't--not until you'd given it a going over."
"They're not sick in a killing way," Burke grunted, "but they seem to
feel that their colonizations act as cathartic to wayward worlds. Just
look at them, and you know that's sick."
"The people," said Barnes, "at the bottom of any movement--a pun,
gentlemen--are always fed on dream-stuff. Soldiers always are. Truth
is, maybe the big boys at home think they can find enough use for us to
warrant keeping us alive. As laborers, as subjects for experimentation,
as pets."
Burke looked out the window at the reddening sky. Then he gathered
their attention by standing up.
"If we hadn't been here," he said, "they would have gone on to Earth
and taken over. As is, they think Mars is nothing to write home about,
but they're sticking around to study awhile--not us, the supposed
latter Martians, the degenerates, but to search out and study the bones
of Mars' civilization back when it was dynamic. Maybe there's something
worth learning. That's what they think."
He hefted the proton-buster. Barnes and Smith and Kirk and Randolph
and Jason and all the others got guns from the box.
There was a hiss and they turned to the window. Rising above the
visible cluster of roof-domes from some point in the other side of
the village was a smaller edition of the Centaurians' space-cube. It
glinted once, high up, and was gone.
"There goes a pretty decent person," said Burke. "I'm glad we don't
have to kill him. He appreciated Randolph's watercolor painting of the
canal." His voice was regretful. "How alien can you get? _His_ name
was Randolph, and he's going home in disgrace."
[Illustration: _"There goes a pretty decent person," said Burke. "I'm
glad we don't have to kill him."_]
Night was coming. Burke's face hardened. The Centaurians would be
coming too, ready to herd the Martians into their sleeping huts.
"One alien ship, terribly armed," Burke went on, "and sixty Centaurians
walking around unarmed because they think we're pansies." He cocked the
gun. "They'll never leave Kinkaaka to bring back more."