"I second!"

"Question!"-"Question!"

"Is there debate?" asked Marlowe.

"Just a moment, Mr. Chairman-" The speaker was one Humphrey Gibbs, a small precise individual. "-we are acting hastily and, if I may say so, not in proper procedure. We have not exhausted our possible reliefs. We should communicate with Mr. Beecher. It may be that there are good reasons for this change in policy-"

"How are you going to like a hundred below!"

"Mr. Chairman, I really must insist on order."

"Let him have his say," Marlowe ordered.

"As I was saying, there may be good reasons, but the Company board back on Earth is perhaps not fully aware of conditions here. If Mr. Beecher is unable to grant us relief, then we should communicate with the board, reason with them. But we should not take the law into our own hands. If worst comes to worst, we have a contract; if forced to do so, we can always sue." He sat down.

MacRae got up again. "Anybody mind if I talk? I don't want to hog the proceedings." Silence gave approval; he went on, "So this pantywaist wants to sue! With the temperature outside a hundred and thirty below by the time he has 'exhausted his means'-and us!-and with the rime frost a foot deep on the ground he wants it put on some judge's calendar, back on Earth, and hire a lawyer!

"If you want a contract enforced, you have to enforce it yourself. You know what lies behind this; it showed up last season when the Company cut down on the household allowance and started charging excess baggage. I warned you then -but the board was a hundred million miles away and you paid rather than fight. The Company hates the expense of moving us, but more important they are bloody anxious to move more immigrants in here faster than we can take them; they think they see a cheap way out by keeping both North Colony and South Colony filled up all the time, instead of building more buildings. As Sister Gibbs put it, they don't realize the conditions here and they don't know that we can't do effective work in the winter.

"The question is not whether or not we can last out a polar winter, the Eskimo caretakers do that every season. It isn't just a matter of contract; it's a matter of whether we are going to be free men, or are we going to let our decisions be made for us on another planet, by men who have never set foot on Mars!

"Just a minute-let me finish! We are the advance guard. When the atmosphere project is finished, millions of others will follow. Are they going to be ruled by a board of absentee owners on Terra? Is Mars to remain a colony of Earth? Now is the time to settle it!"

There was dead silence, then scattered applause. Marlowe said, "Is there more debate?"

Mr. Sutton got up. "Doc has something there. It was never in my blood to love absentee landlords."

Kelly called out, "Right you are. Pat!"

Jim's father said, "I rule that subject out of order. The question before the house is to migrate, at once, and nothing else. Are you ready for the question?"

They were-and it was carried unanimously. If any refrained from voting, at least they did not vote against. That matter settled, by another ballot they set up an emergency committee, the chairman to hold power subject to review by the committee, and the committee's decisions to be subject to review by the colony.

James Marlowe, Senior, was elected chairman. Dr. MacRae's name was proposed but he refused to let it be considered. Mr. Marlowe got even with him by sticking him on the committee.

South Colony held at the time five hundred and nine persons, from the youngest baby to old Doc MacRae. There were eleven scooters on hand; enough but barely enough to move everyone at one time, provided they were stacked almost like freight and each person was limited to a few pounds only of hand baggage. A routine migration was usually made in three or more sections, with extra scooters provided from Syrtis Minor.

Jim's father decided to move everyone at once and hope that events would permit sending back for personal possessions. The squawks were many, but he stood by his guns, the committee ratified and no one tried to call a town meeting. He set dawn Monday as the zero hour.

Kruger was allowed to keep his office; Marlowe preferred to run the show from his own. But Kelly, who remained a sort of de facto chief of police, was instructed to keep a constant watch over him. Kelly called Marlowe Sunday afternoon. "Hey, chief, what do you know? A couple of Company cops just arrived by scooter to take your boy and the Sutton kid back to Syrtis."

Marlowe considered it. Kruger must have phoned Beecher the moment he heard that the boys were home, he decided. "Where are they now?"

"Right here, in Kruger's office. We arrested them."

"Bring them over. I'd like to question them."

"Right."

They showed up shortly, two very disgruntled men, disarmed and escorted by Kelly and an assistant. "That's fine, Mr. Kelly. No, no need to stay-I'm armed."

When Kelly and his deputy had left, one of the Company men said, "You can't get away with this, you know."

"You're not hurt," Marlowe said reasonably, "and you'll get your guns back presently. I just want to ask you some questions." But all he had gotten out of them, several minutes later, was a series of begrudged negative answers. The intracolony phone sounded again; Kelly's face appeared on the screen. "Chief? You wouldn't believe it-"

"Wouldn't believe what?"

"That old fox Kruger has skipped in the scooter those two birds came in on. I didn't even know he could drive."

Marlowe's calm face concealed his feelings. After a short time he answered, "Departure time is stepped up to sundown, today. Drop everything and get the word around." He consulted a chart. "That's two hours and ten minutes from now."

The squawks were louder even than before; nevertheless as the Sun touched the horizon, the first scooter got underway. The rest followed at thirty second intervals. As the Sun disappeared the last one shoved off and the colony was headed north on its seasonal migration.

CHAPTER TEN

"We're Boxed In!'

FOUR OF THE scooters were older types and slower, less than two hundred miles per hour top speed. They were placed in the van as pacesetters. Around midnight one of them developed engine trouble; the column had to slow down. About 3 a.m. it quit completely; it was necessary to stop and distribute its passengers among the other scooters-a cold and risky business.

MacRae and Marlowe climbed back into the headquarters car, last in the column. The doctor glanced at his watch. "Planning to stop in Hesperidum now. Skipper?" he asked as the scooter started up. They had passed Cynia station without stopping; Hesperidum lay a short distance ahead, with Syrtis Minor some seven hundred miles beyond it.

Marlowe frowned. "I don't want to. If we lay over at Hesperidum, that means waiting until sundown for ice and a full day's loss of time. With Kruger ahead of us that gives Beecher a whole day in which to figure out a way to stop us. If I were sure the ice would hold after sunrise long enough for us to get there-" He stopped and chewed his lip.

Back at South Colony it was early winter and the canal ice would remain hard until spring, but here they were already close to the equator; the canals froze every night and thawed every day under the extreme daily changes in temperature permitted by Mars' thin blanket of air. North of the equator, where they were headed, the spring floods from the melting northern polar cap had already started; ice formed in the flooding canal currents at night, but it was floe ice, riding with the current, and night clouds helped to save the daytime heat.