"Tony saved me. Tony and Mikhail. There’s enough heroism to go around for everybody."

He undipped the last of the backpack connectors and lifted the bulky pack off her. It felt heavy, heavier than Jamie had remembered. Reaching across, he put it down on the opposite bench. Then he began to help unseal the suit’s hard-shell torso.

"Please, Jamie," Joanna said. "I can do it for myself now. You should be ready to help Ilona. She is really in bad condition."

He nodded. "Okay."

Before he could get up from the bench, though, Joanna reached a hand to his cheek and pulled his face to hers. She kissed him tenderly.

"Thank you," she whispered.

He clasped one hand around the nape of her neck, feeling the silky softness of her thick dark hair, and kissed her.

Before he could think of anything to say they both heard thumping sounds from the airlock.

"Ilona," Joanna said. "She’ll need help."

Jamie got up and went to the airlock hatch. Ilona was barely conscious and totally unable to stand on her own feet under the weight of her hard suit. Jamie and Reed laid her out on the bench opposite Joanna and removed her helmet and backpack.

She looks half dead, Jamie thought. Her eyes were vacant, glazed, bloodshot, with deep black circles beneath them. Her cheeks were hollow, gaunt, her breath fetid.

But she forced a little smile as she looked up at Jamie. "A man should never… see a woman… first thing in the morning."

"This morning doesn’t count," Jamie said.

"All right… but just… this once."

Connors and finally Vosnesensky rode the cable across the sand-filled crater. By the time the sun was at high noon, they were all out of their suits and Vosnesensky was at the controls in the cockpit, grinning hugely.

"Now we return to the dome," he said. "And from there to orbit in a few days."

"And from orbit, back to Earth," Connors said, perched on one of the benches.

Ivshenko was up in the cockpit with Vosnesensky. Jamie was sitting on the bench between Joanna and the astronaut. Reed was standing beside the galley, his back to the airlock hatch. They had pulled down the lower bunk on the opposite side so that Ilona could lie on it. She seemed to be asleep as the rover lurched into motion.

"You saved our necks, man," said Connors.

"Not me," Jamie said. "Tony…"

But Joanna interrupted him by laying a hand on his thigh. "You saved us. And not only us. You saved our Martian specimens."

Jamie looked down at her urchin’s face, drawn and pale. Is that why she kissed me? Because I saved her damned lichen?

EARTH

Alberto Brumado smiled tiredly into the dazzling lights. He thought he knew how exhausted the explorers on Mars must feel; he felt the same way. He had lost track of how many hours he had been sitting before the lights and cameras and reporters, answering their questions, feeding them the news of the stranded team as it became available to him.

The little lobby of the hotel had quickly proved too small for Brumado’s impromptu news conference, so they had moved — reporters, camera crews, lights, and all — to the largest conference room in the hotel and quickly jammed it to the walls and out into the corridor beyond its wide double doors.

The Mars Project officials at the Johnson Space Center had been furious, at first, that Brumado was talking off the cuff to the media. But after the first few hours, and hurried phone discussions with Washington and Kaliningrad, the project bigwigs had offered Brumado their own spacious conference hall at the Johnson Center.

None of the media people wanted to shut down and move to Johnson, not while they had Brumado live, giving a bravura marathon performance. So, swallowing their resentment, the Johnson people began passing information to Brumado as it came in from Mars.

Brumado was sitting on a folding chair behind a little table, up on the makeshift dais that had been quickly erected at the far end of the room. Perspiring, hair tousled, suit rumpled, tie long gone from his collar, he took another sheet of paper from Edith’s hand, scanned it quickly, then smiled up at the cameras.

"They are safe," he said, the three most wonderful words he had ever spoken. "Dr. Waterman carried the cable line to the second rover and cosmonaut Vosnesensky has brought the others to their vehicle. They have started on their way back to the dome."

He could not see the pack of reporters beyond the glare of the TV lights, but he heard them sigh audibly, then break into spontaneous applause. Brumado felt surprised at that; then he wondered if they were applauding the good news or his own performance. The good news, of course. Joanna is safe. She will live. He stood up on weak, trembling legs and raised both his hands.

"If you will excuse me, I would like to take a break now. The public-information people at Johnson can take over, if you would be kind enough to go there."

They applauded again, startling him anew. This time he realized it was for him. Alberto Brumado smiled boyishly and realized he needed to go to the toilet very badly.

Edith, standing off to one side of the dais, knew that Brumado would immediately want to speak to his daughter. She intended to be there when he did. It would be her chance to see Jamie.

He’s safe, Edith said to herself. And a hero. She felt proud of him. And of Alberto, who had turned this near disaster into a global media triumph.

It was only then, after more than twelve nonstop hours, that Edith began to think about how this event could be used to further her own career.

SOL 45: MORNING

Everyone feels so damned happy to be leaving, Jamie thought. Why don’t I?

They had packed their specimens and computer disks aboard the ascent modules of the L/AVs. All the lab equipment and what remained of their supplies had been carefully covered and sealed, to be left inside the dome with the furniture and life-support equipment, ready to be used by the next explorers — if there was to be a second Mars expedition.

Jamie felt as if he were leaving a home he had lived in all his life. He remembered the hollow, almost frightened feeling in the pit of his stomach the day he and his parents had left Santa Fe for their new home in Berkeley. He had been five years old then. Funny the things you remember, he thought.

The dome echoed now with emptiness. He felt sad, despondent about it.

"Message coming in for you," Ollie Zieman told him, startling Jamie out of his reverie. The astronaut was manning the communications console until the last L/AV was ready to lift off.

Jamie followed him to the comm center and sat in front of the main console. He was surprised to see Edith’s face on the screen.

She looked very tired, as if she had not slept for days. But happy.

"Jamie, I’ve been trying to get through to you for five days now. The project people have finally let me send a personal message to y’all. We — Alberto and me — we’ve been on the air almost nonstop, trying to do what you guys call damage control for the project. Alberto gave them a blow-by-blow account of your rescue, and I saw to it that his version of what happened to y’all got out on the air before anybody else had a chance to say diddly-squat."

Jamie grinned at her image. No matter what she was doing with her private life, Edith had become part of the Mars team.

"Now, they only gave me a minute of their precious transmission time, so all I got time to say is — I’ll be waiting for you in Washington when you got back. I’ll be the full-time regular space correspondent for Cable News, and I expect to get a private and exclusive interview with you. Don’t matter who else you been talking to, if you get what I mean. I want to interview you. Understand me?"