“Be consoled,” advised Latourelle. “I speak as a man of experience. No one ever died of a broken heart. That organ is capable of miraculously rapid self-repair. The secret is to give it time to do so.”

“Oh, I’m long over that business,” said Magarac. “What I’m anxious to find out is how synthetic chemistry is progressing on Earth.”

“So? I realize that to operate a plantation here requires a good scientific background, but are you so vitally interested that you cannot wait until your mail is delivered?”

“I am,” said Magarac. “And so is all Mars, whether they know it or not. Eighty per cent of our industry is based on the drybean. It won’t grow anywhere else, and they’re finding new medicinal uses for the extract every year. But figure it out for yourself. Freight rates being what they are, the stuff costs fifty dollars an ounce by the time the Earth doctor gets it. Every chemical firm you can name has a team trying to synthesize the basic molecule. One day soon, they’re going to do it and then the drybean planters are finished. I’m watching the technical journals so I can sell out in time.”

“And what will you do then, with the Dominion broke?”

“God only knows.”

“And I thank Him I was born to be a research physicist, and I thank the Rockefeller Foundation for so generously subsidizing my work,” said Latourelle. “Though with all respect to this excellent planet of yours, my friend, it seems a long and dry three years ahead until I can return to France.” He had arrived with the Fleet before last, but even if he finished ahead of schedule, he would have to wait his turn for passage.

“What d’you have to be here for, anyway?” asked Magarac. He had gotten quite friendly with Latourelle, but knew little of the man’s highly specialized project.

“I am studying magnetism. Mars, you see, does not have a core like Earth, but is of uniform composition. Apparently that accounts for its peculiar magnetic field … Yet in what way? I think it is an effect of relativistic wave mechanics. I have developed a most beautiful theory of Riemannian folds in a multiply connected space. Now I am checking the magnetic data to see if my theory will hold—you pardon the expression—water.”