There was a final meeting in the big space they had cleared in the Lermontov, a meeting strange and tentative. To each group there the other was dying. I felt as if miles of plasteel separated me from everyone else. Then they were all milling about, saying good-bye. It all happened very quickly. I felt very tired. Nadezhda and Marie-Anne found me and hugged me. I moved with the others toward the corridor leading to the boat bay, saying “Good-bye… farewell… good-bye.” Then Eric was standing before me, holding me. Davydov was at his side. They looked at each other. Davydov said, “She’s what you leave behind, eh?” Then he took my arm, led me to the corridor. “Good-bye!” Eric called. “Yes,” I mumbled. Then we were in the boat bay.

“Good-bye, Emma,” Davydov said. “Thank you for your help.”

“Don’t run into anything,” I said, my voice tight.

He shook his head.

“Good-bye, Oleg Davydov.” I could hardly say it.

He turned and walked out of the bay. I got on the boat and we shot out into space, back to Rust Eagle where we began. Once there the new crew members looked at each other. Three MSA members who had decided to return; ten or a dozen people bitterly opposed to the starship effort, clustered around Valenski and Duggins; and another dozen people who had not cared, or who had helped the effort. We moved to the bridge by unspoken consent. I went to the window and looked at the starship again. The sun was behind us, and for a second our shadow crossed over the double ship.

I stood inside the window, watching. I couldn’t think — every thought I had short- circuited and died.

The starship moved forward. Helplessly I moved along the window with it, watching with the others as it receded, angling away: first a bright belt, then a necklace, a bracelet, a ring, and lastly a silver jewel, that diminished and diminished and disappeared.

All that was left was to go home, home to the red planet. At the thought, over everything else, I felt immense relief.

Since then we have all taken on the various tasks we are capable of, and I, in the privacy of my empty room, have written this record — an attempt to save, for the Emma of the following centuries, some account of these months.

Without a doubt this is the strangest crew Rust Eagle has ever carried. Ethel Jurgenson, Yuri Kopanev and I have taken over the work on the bridge, which is mostly monitoring at this point. Valenski in turn monitors us, walking about the bridge like a teacher during a test. Ginger Sims and Amy Van Danke and Nikos Micora, one of the MSA people who decided to return (very quiet he is), are taking care of the farm, with the help of three or four others, including Al Nordhoff. They report to me, but Valenski insists on being present all the time we are working.

Despite this suspicious atmosphere, the relations between the various factions aboard are better than they were at first. About four days into our return Yuri and Duggins started a fight in the dining commons; they had to be pulled apart by Sandra and several others. The two principals were pretty well bruised, Duggins from flying backwards over a table, a wonderful sight to my eyes. For a couple of days we were like two armed camps. Eventually I went to Valenski’s room to talk. “You mind your own business and we’ll mind ours. Everybody just do their job. When we get back to Mars they’ll take the ship into custody and we can all say what we like.”

“Fine with me,” he said. “It’s you who’ll be in trouble then, not me.”

True enough, perhaps. But since then things have been relatively calm. In our private meetings Yuri suggested taking over the ship and going to Earth, but the idea was rejected. First of all, no one wanted to risk a violent confrontation with the loyalists. But more importantly, I think, no one was willing to face the idea of going to Earth. With its wars, its hungry billions, its gravity — we all instinctively felt that nothing on Mars could be as bad. Besides, as Sandra pointed out, Earth is no more than the home of the Committee’s bosses, and so not much of an asylum.

So we coast toward Mars and wait. I have spent these days like a somnambulist, my mind existing in the past months as I wrote this record, or wandering toward Saturn with the starship and its crew, my friends. At first I was helpless to control this behavior, and I floated through Rust Eagle without responding to my mates. Later I cultivated it as a sort of act, as I noticed that it tended to subdue everyone else aboard.

We have no transmitter, so we have listened mutely to what we can hear on the receiver. There isn’t much. Clearly the trouble has continued on Mars, and that makes it hard — not knowing what we are returning to.

But it won’t be much longer until we know. I have filled up the weeks with this record, inadequate though it certainly is, for who can translate the amazing bombardment of experience into words? Yet it has passed the time. Deceleration starts today, bringing the blessed attraction to the floor. And soon we will be back in Mars space. If I can I will continue penning away in this little notebook, to give it a sort of ending. But I fear they will throw us all in jail.

It was the rebels who met us.

I’ll never forget the look on Andrew Duggins’ face. Reality had betrayed him; the brave were springing up everywhere, even on his home ground where he might least expect it, and he couldn’t escape them.

And yet I am sure that several of us collaborators were not much less dismayed to be received by anti-Committee forces.

Well, this is how it happened. They met us just outside the orbit of Amor, in one of those little police craft that are used to patrol the space around Phobos and Deimos, and to take prisoners up to Amor. As I stared out the bridge window at the red crescent of the planet, wondering if I would set foot on it again, they hurried out of the jump tube — about ten tense-looking men and women, dressed in working one-pieces. They pointed long-nosed weapons at us, hot light guns, and for a long adrenaline-filled moment I thought they were removing all the witnesses to the mutiny…

“Is this Rust Eagle?” asked a blond-haired man, for we had been unable to respond to their angry questions by radio.

“Yes,” two or three of us replied.

The man nodded. “We are the Texan cell of the Washington-Lenin Alliance. You have been liberated—” He smiled, at our expressions I suppose. “And we are taking you as quickly as we can to New Houston, a free city.”

That was when Duggins looked as if the world had turned upside down. Ethel and I looked at each other open-mouthed. Yuri held us both in a hug, moving slowly in front of the guns. It was he who began to explain us to the blond man, but he hadn’t got far before we were ushered to the boat bay, to transfer to the police craft. There we were separated into smaller groups and interviewed by a pair of the rebels. Soon I was led to a room containing the blond man and a woman about my age.

“You’re Emma Weil?”

I told them I was. They asked me some questions about the MSA and their adventures, and I confirmed the story that Yuri and the others had told.

“So there has been a revolution?” I said. “And the Committee overthrown?”

They were both shaking their heads. “The battle is still on,” said the woman, whose name was Susan Jones.

The blond man was her brother. “Actually,” he said, “we aren’t doing so well.” He stood. “At first the uprising was planet-wide, but now — we still hold Texas—”

“Of course,” I said, and they grinned.

“And the Soviet sector. There’s still fighting in Mobil and the Atlantic, and in the tunnels on Phobos. But everywhere else, the Committee troops have regained control.”

“Royal Dutch?” I asked, my windpipe suddenly constricted.