One in 300 Read Free Page A

on or about September

18; the other was that Mars, instead of sharing in the disaster, would

almost certainly be more habitable after the solar change than before.
     
     
It was a double blow. Before that, people could refuse to believe that the

world was in any danger. After it, there was the knowledge that some people would live. The law of survival became Mars at Any Price.
     
     
A few people who moved quickly enough actually gave themselves life

simply by booking passages to Mars. But very soon the survival of the

human race was organized. The planners and statisticians got to work.

And about their deliberations and premises I know nothing.
     
     
The edict was that 1 in 324.7 people could go to Mars. That was pretty

damn good, we were told. It could be achieved only by having every machine

plant that could possibly be used for the job feverishly producing anything

that could prise itself off Earth before it was too late.
     
     
Pretty damn good it might be, but it meant that 324 out of every 325 people

all over Earth were going to die.
     
     
Somehow one person out of every three hundred or so had to be picked out

for a chance to live on a strange world. And the job had been given,

rightly or wrongly, to the men who were actually to take them to their

new home.
     
     
There wasn't much time for argument. Friday, September 18, was deadline.

For a few hours after noon on Friday the real spaceships, the ships

properly built before the heat was on, would be landing and taking away

extra cargoes of human beings. But by noon Friday all the rush jobs,

the lifeships made in desperate haste for one trip only, would have to

be clear of Earth. Otherwise they might as well stay where they were.
     
     
So they sent us out -- us, the men and women who happened to be able to

handle a ship -- to collect the ten people who would go with each of us.
     
     
See what I mean about needing a library for the whole story? The details

of how agreement was reached on that point would make a book.
     
     
We weren't anything special, the newly appointed gods who had to pick

ten people out of 3250 or so. It just so hap- pened that the way to get

most people off the Earth was to build thousands of tiny ships into which

eleven people could be packed. A little more time, and perhaps mighty ships

could have been built, and a different method of selection employed.
     
     
Anyone who had any hope of being able to handle a lifeship was given a

command. I had been a radio officer on an expeditionary spaceship. At

that I had a better background than some of the men and women who were

going to try to take lifeships to Mars. Mary Homer, the stewardess on

the exploration ship, had a command, I knew.
     
     
In the end, of course, the real shortage wasn't of lieutenants but of

lifeships. Otherwise they'd have had training schools set up to turn

out space pilots in a hurry (normally, it only took five years).
     
     
I had been given Simsville, which was just big enough to supply a

lifeship complement and no more. I'd never been there before, of

course. Lieutenants were invariably sent where they knew nobody.
     
     
And four days before takeoff, I had my list of people who were to live.
     
     
The Powells. They were Mr. and Mrs. America, Jr. Fred Mortenson, the

brash, clean-limbed young hero-to-be. Harry Phillips, who wasn't quite

sure it was right for people to go dashing away from the world that

had given them life, merely because it was now going to bring them

death. Little Bessie Phillips, who didn't know what it was all about

(who did?). Miss Wallace, a schoolteacher and a good one. People like

her would be needed. The Stowes, Mr. and Mrs. America, Sr., and Jim,

their son. Leslie Darby.
     
     
Because Leslie was going, Pat would stay. Don't allow for what you think

the rest of you are going to do, I'd been told, with all the other

lieutenants of lifeships. But it was difficult to escape the idea