nician like me is far too busy here, for one thing,"
she assured him, her happy tone bridging the distance. "We came this far
with a well-armed freight caravan, in good passenger quarters. If we
went on, I suppose it would be the same... Anyway, for years you didn't
worry much about me. Why now, Frank?"

"A mystery," he teased in return. "Or perhaps because I considered Earth
safe--instinctively."

But he was right in the first place. It _was_ a mystery--something to do
with the startling news that she was on the way, that closer friendship
was pending. The impulse to go meet her had been his first, almost
thoughtless impulse.

He was still glad that she wasn't out between Mars and the Belt, where
disaster had once hit him hard. But now he wondered if the Survey
Station was any better for anybody, even though it was reputed to be
quite secure.

The caravan he rode approached his destination no closer than ten
million miles. Taking cautious note of radar data which indicated that
space all around was safely empty, he cast off in his Archer with a
small, new, professional-type bubb packed across his hips. Inside his
helmet he lighted a cigarette--quite an unusual luxury.

It took a long time to reach Phobos. They gave him shots there--new
preventative medicine that was partially effective against the viruses
of Mars. Descent in the winged rocket was rough. But then he was gliding
with a sibilant whistle through a natural atmosphere, again. Within
minutes he was at the Station--low, dusty domes, many of them deserted,
now, at the edge of the airfield, a lazily-spinning wind gauge,
tractors, auto-jeeps, several helicopters.

He stepped down with his gear. Mars was all around him: A few
ground-clinging growths nearby--harmless, locally evolved vegetation.
Distant, coppery cliffs reflecting the setting sun. Ancient excavations
notched them. Dun desert to the east, with little plumes of dust
blowing. Through his Archer--a necessary garment here not only because
the atmosphere was only one-tenth as dense as Earth-air and poor in
oxygen, but because of the microscopic dangers it bore--Nelsen could
hear the faint sough of the wind.

The thirty-eight percent of terrestrial gravity actually seemed strong
to him now, and made him awkward, as he turned and looked west. Perhaps
two miles off, past a barbed-wire fence and what must be an old tractor
trail of the hopeful days of colonization, he saw the blue-green edge of
Syrti