First published as “I’ll Not Ask for Wine” in Maclean’s, January 1, 1950.
The following chapter, “Ylla”, moves the story to Mars.
Who is Ylla? She is a Martian woman trapped in an unromantic marriage. She dreams of the coming astronauts through telepathy. Her husband, though he pretends to deny her dreams are real, becomes bitterly jealous, sensing his wife’s inchoate romantic feelings for one of the astronauts.
He kills the two-man expedition, astronauts Nathaniel York and one simply called Bert, as soon as they arrive.
A 1997 edition of the book advances all the dates by 31 years from 1999 to 2030.
