So they used dogs. They used probes. They used cardioplate crossoffs. They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stiktytes. They used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used finks. They used cops. They used search&seizure. They used fallaron. They used betterment incentive. They used fingerprints. They used Bertillon. They used cunning. They used guile. They used treachery. They used Raoul Mitgong, but he didn’t help much. They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology.
And what the hell: they caught him.
After all, his name was Everett C. Marm, and he wasn’t much to begin with, except a man who had no sense of time.
“The leaf that spreads in the light is the only holiness there is. I haven’t found holiness in the faiths of mortals, or in their music, not in their dreams: it’s out in the open field, with the green rows looking at the sky. I don’t know what it is, this holiness: but it’s there, and it looks at the sky.
Probably though this is some conditioning the Company installed to ensure I’d be a good botanist. Well, I grew up into a good one. Damned good.”
In my practice, I’ve seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn’t seem to mind… All of us - a little bit - we harden our hearts, grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear.
He loved his wife. He’d loved her since the day he met her, and he would love her till the day he died, and she knew it. But she also knew, although they’d never discussed it, that he’d had more than one affair since the freak accident put her in her life-support chair. There was no way—could never be one, ever again—the two of them could enjoy a physical relationship.
There’s an international treaty saying that no country can lay claim to anything that’s not on Earth. By another treaty if you’re not in any country’s territory, maritime law applies. So, Mars is international waters. Now, NASA is an American non-military organization, it owns the Hab. But the second I walk outside I’m in international waters. So here’s the cool part. I’m about to leave for the Schiaparelli Crater where I’m going to commandeer the Ares IV lander. Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can’t until I’m on board the Ares IV. So, I’m going to be taking a craft over in international waters without permission, which by definition makes me a pirate. Mark Watney: Space Pirate.
It might be a bit much to call any of them crusaders, and certainly if they were knights at all, most of them were at best a murky shade of gray, but every one of them took a profound satisfaction in knowing any pirate who went after the Bane or Ambuscade would never make another mistake.
For generations every young knight went looking for Earth, unless he chose to look for the Holy Grail. But you know how many suns there are. And even more toward the center of the galaxy, where we encountered still other starfaring peoples. Commerce, exploration, war, everything drew us inward, away from this thinly starred spiral arm.
As you all know, eons ago our ancestors created our great Frontier, a barrier of energy surrounding the peaceful systems of the galaxy, forever shutting out the scourge that lay beyond. Because of a dark betrayal, our Frontier will soon collapse. So we turn to you, Starfighters and your navigators. For of all the billions of peoples in the galaxy, only you few were found to possess the, uh… gift. You, and you alone, stand between us and the dark terror of the Ko-Dan. VICTORY OR DEATH!