（外文电子版资料）Larry Niven - How the Heroes Die.doc

HOW THE HEROES DIE Larry Niven Only sheer ruthlessness could have taken him out of town Alive. The mob behind Carter hadnt tried to guard the Marsbuggies, since Carter would have needed too much time to take a buggy through the vehicular airlock. They could have caught him there, and they knew it. Some were guarding the personnel lock, hoping hed try for that. He might have; for if he could have closed the one door in their faces and opened the next, the safeties would have protected him while he went through the third and fourth and outside. On the Marsbuggy he was trapped in the bubble. There was room to drive around in. Less than half the prefab houses had been erected so far. The rest of the bubbletowns floor was flat fused sand, empty but for scattered piles of foam-plastic walls and ceilings and floors. But theyd get him eventually. Already they were starting up another buggy. They never expected him to run his vehicle through the bubble wall. The Marsbuggy tilted, then righted itself. A blast of breathing-air roared out around him, picked up a cloud of fine sand, and hurled it explosively away into the thin, poisoned atmosphere. Carter grinned as he looked behind him. They would die now, all of them. He was the only one wearing a pressure suit. In an hour he could come back and repair the rip in the bubble. Hed have to dream up a fancy story to tell when the next ship came . . . Carter frowned. What were they At least ten wind-harried men were wrestling with the wall of a prefab house. As Carter watched, they picked the wall up off the fused sand, balanced it almost upright, and let go. The foam-plastic wall rose into the wind and slapped hard against the bubble, over the ten-foot rip. Carter stopped his buggy to see what would happen. Nobody was dead. The air was not shrieking away but leaking away. Slowly, methodically, a line of men climbed into their suits and filed through the personnel lock to repair the bubble. A buggy entered the vehicular lock. The t