e I shouldn't have run
out on the Belt. Can't run--thoughts follow you. But now--dammit--I want
to go home!"

"That's regular, Frank. 'Cause you've got Syrtis. Chronic,
now--intermittent. But it'll fade. Same with your girl. Meanwhile, they
won't let you go Earthside, but you'll be okay. I'll fly you out, close
enough to the Station to get back, any morning before daylight, that you
pick... Only, you won't tell, will you, Frank?"

"No--I promise--if you think secrecy makes any difference.
Otherwise--thanks for everything... By the way--do you ever listen in
on outside news?"

"Enough. Still quiet... And a fella named Miguel Ramos--with
nerve-controlled clamps for hands--got a new, special bubb and took off
for Pluto."

"No! Damn fool... Almost as loony as you are, Mitch."

"Less... Wake up, Nance. Dinner... Chicken--raised right here..."

That same afternoon, Frank Nelsen and Nance Codiss sat in the garden.
"If I blur, just hold me tight, Frankie," she said. "Everything is still
too strange to quite get a grip on--yet... But I'm _not_ going home,
Frank--not even when it is allowed. I set out--I'm sticking--I'm not
turning tail. It's what people have got to do--in space more than
ever..."

Even when the seizure of fever came, and the sweat gathered on her lips,
and her eyes went wild, she gritted her teeth and just clung to him. She
had spunk--admirable, if perhaps destructive. "Love yuh," Frank kept
saying. "Love yuh, Sweetie..."

Two days later, before the frigid dawn, they saw the last of Mitch
Storey and his slender, beautiful wife with her challenging brown eyes.

"Be careful that you do right for Mitch and--these _folks_," she warned
almost commandingly as the old heli landed in the desert a few miles
from the Station. "What would you do--if outsiders came blundering into
your world by the hundreds, making trails, killing you with fire? At
first, _they_ didn't even fight back."

The question was ancient but valid. In spite of his experiences, Nelsen
agreed with the logic and the justice. "We'll make up a story, Selma,"
he said solemnly.

Mitch looked anxious. "Human people will find a way, won't they, Frank?"
he asked. "To win, to come to Mars and live, I mean--to change
everything. Sure--some will be sympathetic. But when there's practical
pressure--need--danger--economics...?"

"I don't know, Mitch," Nelsen answered in the same tone as before. "Your
thickets do have a pretty good defense."

But