Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham Page B

better, Dale's anxiety became less acute. Though he was still without a proper comprehension of the force which had driven her to stow away, he appreciated that she was not the type he had feared. Perhaps it was only Froud who realized that his worry had not been so much ill founded as ill directed.
    Joan's own perception of the situation was sharper than Dale's, though less comprehensive than Froud's. But her mind was set on a single mark, and objects aside of the direct line lacked something of definition and proportion. In spite of herself she minimized her circumstances in view of her aim the vindication of her father and herself. Nothing was to be allowed to interfere with that. For the duration of the journey she was putting all other personal considerations aside, intending to become, as far as lay in her power, only an instrument for justice; she imagined that it was possible for her to forget and to make the rest forget for three months that she was a woman.
    The part she had cast herself for was that of a young man and an equal, and she did her best to play it. But her intention to treat all the five men with complete impartiality was defeated by Dale and the engineer. Dale remained unfriendly and sometimes aggressive, while Burns was unresponsive, occasionally varying his attitude of indifference with a touch of belittlement. It was impossible for her to treat either of them as she treated the three who took her, or appeared to take her, at the valuation she wished, for both the doctor and Dugan, while still non committal, had had the grace to regard her story as a hypothesis to be proved or disproved later. Burns, on the other hand, continued to dismiss it with silent contempt, and Dale not infrequently created opportunities for expressing his opinions of it.
    It irritated him considerably that they left Joan quite unshaken. She continued to speak of it as a fact, admittedly unusual, but not fantastic. All his sharpest barbs shivered exasperatingly on a wall of cool indifference, and she did not show the weakness of attempting retaliation.
    Froud and Grayson had contrived new material for argument. In the course of the lesson they had drifted into a discussion of the comparative merits of ideographic and alphabetical writing. The argument had risen over an attempt to classify the Martian script, but it soon reached the stage where Froud found himself passionately asserting the superiority of the ideograph (of which he knew extremely little) while the doctor defended the alphabet.
    'Take China,' Froud was saying, with a generous wave of the hand, 'a country with hundreds of dialects. Now, with an alphabet, any man wishing to write for the whole country would have to be translated or else have to learn all those dialects and languages, whereas, with ideographs, what happens?'
    'He has to learn thousands of ideographs,' said the doctor brightly. ' It means that educated people throughout the country can communicate whatever their language. Now if Europe, instead of having two or three alphabets, wrote purely in ideas, think of the misunderstandings which would have been avoided, and think of the possibilities for international exchange.'
    'I don't remember hearing that there was much less misunderstanding in Europe when every educated person spoke and wrote Latin,' the doctor observed. 'And it seems to me that ideographs are not only more limited than words, but even more capable of misinterpretation. Furthermore, is China in its present bogged condition an advertisement for anything? Now, when the Chinese adopt an alphabet '
    'They will also have to invent a kind of Chinese Esperanto. Unless they do, every book will have to be translated into dozens of languages and '
    'Hi,' interrupted Dale. 'Just leave China for a bit and consider where we are.'
    'Well,' said Froud, 'where are we?'
    'I'll tell you. We're exactly half way there.'
    For some reason they all rose and made for the unshuttered windows and stood there,