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120 "Then you did know that I had something to conquer?" he asked.

"I guessed it, after a while. That is why I thought you were a safe companion for me."

"I'm not—I'm not afraid," he murmured to the sky. He was lying flat on his back, with his hands under his head for a pillow. "When a man is in a foreign country," he said, "surrounded on all sides by strangers and he suddenly runs across somebody from home, he doesn't feel a bit safe, and reliable, especially if he's as far away from home as the earth is from old Mars up there. You must know what it's like to hear your own language spoken, with your own peculiar accent too, after being tortured for weeks and weeks by the babble of crowds of strangers who don't understand even your signs and motions. That's what it was like to me when I first met you." He paused a second or two. "I've a notion," he went on, still staring up into the sky, "that there aren't many of us here from Mars. Ever since I saw you last, that notion—that fear has been growing. 'Perhaps,' I thought, 'I'll never meet any one else from my particular homeland,' so I made up my mind I wouldn't let you slip through my fingers. That's why I'm here. That's why I'm going to stay here for a week."