This was to be the day , but of course Professor Pettibone had no way of knowing it. He arose, as he had been doing for the previous twenty years, donned the tattered remnants of his space suit, and went out into the open. He stood erect, bronzed, magnificent, faced distant Earth, and recited: It was something he had heard as a child and, isolated here on Mars, he had remembered it and used it to keep from losing his power of speech. The ritual finished, he walked to the edge of the nearest cana