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it."
     
     
"Maybe I should keep it to myself, since it doesn't seem to have occurred

to anyone else. But it's a disturbing thought, and you might be able

to settle it for me. If you can't, I think I'll go back to the rye,

for another reason."
     
     
"Everybody's evasive," I complained. "Spit it out."
     
     
"Can I ask you a few questions?" He lowered himself carefully into a chair.

"How long does it take to build a regular spaceship?"
     
     
"Nearly a year.
     
     
"How many people could the regular ships have taken off while there's

still time?"
     
     
"I don't know. A few hundred. About one in five million people. What are

you getting at?"
     
     
"Where's your life ship being built? Have you seen it?"
     
     
It should have been obvious what he was thinking, but I didn't see it.

Pat did. She caught her breath and looked at Sammy with horror.
     
     
"At Detroit. With thousands of others. The whole place has been evacuated

and made into a military reservation. Like Philadelphia and Phoenix and

Birmingham and Berlin and Omsk and Adelaide. But you know about that.

Yes, I've seen the lifeships. They won't be ready until a few hours before

takeoff. No trials. Plenty of them won't get near Mars. Is that what you

mean? It's not publicized, but anyone who knows the first thing about

interplanetary flight can work that out for himself. So?"
     
     
"Suppose only one in five million people had a chance of life. What would

have happened on Earth?"
     
     
"It's not a pleasant thought," I admitted. "That riot yesterday was nothing

to what we'd have had, all day and every day, all over the world. But human

beings are pretty ingenious when the heat's on. It didn't take long to draw

up plans for ships that could be made in eight weeks, when it was really

necessary. So what you're visualizing didn't happen."
     
     
"Yes," said Sammy quietly. "It didn't happen. Because, as you say,

human beings can be pretty ingenious."
     
     
I saw at last what he meant, and laughed. He had had me worried.
     
     
"You mean that knowing what would happen if only one in five million

people could be taken to safety, the high-ups instituted a hoax, to keep

the world quiet," I said. "One in three hundred is different. It's an

appreciable chance. People won't throw it away. They'll be very careful

until they know they've lost it. That's it, isn't it?"
     
     
I laughed again. "If there were any real point in it," I went on,

"I might begin to believe it. But where's the gain? What would it

matter if people all over the world fought and pillaged and looted and

murdered? It'll all be the same when the mercury shoots out of the top

of all the thermometers."
     
     
"There might even be a point," said Sammy. "Who's going in the regular

ships? Groups carefully selected -- not by pro tem lieutenants whose

only qualification is that they know one end of a spaceship from the

other. The real ships are taking the essential people, the equipment,

the supplies -- "
     
     
"Naturally, when the lifeships are such a gamble."
     
     
"More natural still if none of the lifeships are expected to arrive.

Perhaps not even to leave Earth. Don't you see what I'm afraid of?

The high-up officials knew that if they told the truth everything would

be chaos. Mobs would destroy the ships that wouldn't take them to

Mars. They'd kill anyone suspected of being chosen to go. When a ship

landed, anywhere, a million people would be swarming around it before

the ports opened.
     
     
"Now see the way it is. The top officials of all governments can carefully,

quietly select the people for the colonies, take them to the spaceports,

and get them aboard the ships. There may be incidents, but people don't go

wild for fear they might lose their chance of a place on a lifeship. See

what a smart, hellish scheme it is? The people who are really going to Mars

can prepare quietly, without being disturbed, while a third of the population

of Earth is