car, running to the airlock, with
the grass lashing at their legs and the wind lashing at their faces and
the cold night air aflame suddenly in their lungs. And Trina couldn't
protest any longer, not with the world mad about her, not with Saari's
words ringing in her ears like the wind.

She saw them carry Curt Elias in, and then Max was helping her aboard,
and a moment later, finally, the airlock doors slipped shut and it was
quiet.

She held out her arm for the needle.

* * * * *

When she awoke again it was morning. Morning on the world. They had
carried her to one of the divans in the council hall, one near a window
so that she could see the familiar fields of her homeland as soon as she
awoke. She rubbed her eyes and straightened and looked up at the others.
At Elias, still resting on another divan. At Captain Bernard. At Saari
and her father, and another man from the planet. At Max.

He looked at her, and then sighed and turned away, shaking his head.

"Are we--are we going back there?" Trina asked.

"No," Elias said. "The people are against it."

There was silence for a moment, and then Elias went on. "I'm against it.
I suppose that even if I'd been young I wouldn't have wanted to stay."
His eyes met Trina's, and there was pity in them.

"No," Max said. "You wouldn't have wanted to."

"And yet," Elias said, "I went down there. Trina went down there. Her
father and I both went out into space." He sighed. "The others wouldn't
even do that."

"You're not quite as bad, that's all," Max said bluntly. "But I don't
understand any of you. None of us ever has understood you. None of us
ever will."

Trina looked across at him. Her fingers knew every line of his face, but
now he was withdrawn, a stranger. "You're going back there, aren't you?"
she said. And when he nodded, she sighed. "We'll never understand you
either, I guess."

She remembered Saari's question of the night before, "Is he your man?"
and she realized that her answer had not been the truth. She knew now
that he had never been hers, not really, nor she his, that the woman who
would be his would be like Saari, eager and unafraid and laughing in the
wind, or looking out the ports at friendly stars.

Elias leaned forward on the divan and gestured toward the master weather
panel for their part of the village, the indicators that told what it
was like today and what it would be like tomorrow all over the world. "I