Charles L. Fontenay

“ Shaan was a democrat. Rightly or wrongly, he was convinced that the Imperial Government bore within it the seeds of dissatisfaction and strife, eventually a war of rebellion that would crumble the domes and leave all the people of Mars to gasp away their lives.
Let them destroy themselves. Men would still live on Mars, without the domes. ”

“ His passage through the plants left a path behind him, a path that slowly closed again as though the canal sage moved deliberately to heal the break.
His only hope in that fifteen minutes was to find a giant canal cactus. All Martian plants, the botanists had decided, kept their oxygen supply in their hollow interiors. A full-grown canal cactus was forty feet tall and twenty feet across. If he could break his way into one, it was big enough to supply him with both oxygen and water. ”

“ If the girls awoke from suspended animation in the thin Martian air, their simulated death would become real.
Shaan went back into the bedroom. He took Lori under one arm, Vali under the other. They were easy to carry in Martian gravity.
The plastic of the dome had settled, clinging. He had to burn his way through the diaphragm of it that barred the door.
Carrying the girls, he walked across the wrinkled plastic to the ground. Half a mile away, the groundcar had overturned in the canal sage. Fed by the oxygen from beneath the plants, it was burning slowly. ”

“ He checked the supplies of the largest marsuit with one hand, holding the gun on MkDowl with the other. "A groundcar can't outrun planes, but I think I can make the cactus forests of the Hadriacum Lowlands before they spot me. They won't find me there."
"You'll never get out of this dome. I can find a way to stop you before you can get that groundcar through the airlock."
"We'll see," said Shaan, turning from the rack with the hypo from the third marsuit. "Why are you so bitter against a man you don't know?" ”

“ Not for them would he give up his own life to stay near MkDowl's Dome and call the 'copters in.
Shaan was a democrat and by virtue of that was engaged in a war without quarter against almost everyone else on Mars. He was a lone relic of a defeated army, and he had been driven to the wall. He could surrender to death, or he could fight for survival.
Many men before him, and many living creatures before man appeared on Earth, had faced that situation in one form or another, he thought. ”

“ He hadn't expected the radio message to be sent until the girls' father arrived. This changed his plans. Now he'd have to appropriate a marsuit and supplies and flee in the dome's groundcar. What then, he didn't know. There could be no refuge for condemned democrats anywhere on Mars.
Vali's gun was strapped to her side now. Lori evidently had taken her own weapon into the kitchen with her. Lori was taking no chances, and not letting her sister take any.
"I left my watch in the bathroom," said Shaan and went back into the hall. ”

“ They were furry, squirrel-like creatures without tails, that ran on their two hind legs and held hand-like paws against their chests. They stared at him with big bright eyes, about half a dozen of them, before they ran out through the hole he had enlarged. ”