The final briefing took sixteen hours. If Lynne, through her years of coaching for and year of work on the integration-team, had not been trained to complete concentration over long periods, she would never have been able to absorb all the new knowledge Tony Willis and other communications experts pumped into her. At the end of that time he looked at her with red-rimmed but admiring eyes, shook his head and said, "My hat is off to you, Lynne. You're the quickest study I've ever met." "Thanks--most of it's a matter of training," she replied modestly. She was glad he was not telepathic or he would have read the bright glow of far-from-modest pride that ran through her. _Wait till Rolf hears about it_, she thought. _Maybe he won't think I'm such a_ marlet _after all._ With this went added pride in that she was obviously less exhausted than her mentor. When it was over she was fed real meat for the fourth or fifth time in her life--ham from lean Martian-bred hog, basted in some curious alien sauce. With it went real potatoes and non-processed vegetables, raised on the red planet. Rugged or not, Lynne decided as she was bundled into a planetcar, life on Mars had its compensations. When the ship landed at Barkutburg a tearose-pale Martian dawn was lighting the dark eastern sky. Lynne felt a tingle of anticipation, mixed with dread, a stir of _déja vu_--the I've-been-here-before feeling--as she alighted with her strangely light bag in hand and paused to sip sparingly of her oxyrespirator. For here was her nightmare city, though seen from the ground. Here were the widely-spaced transparent towers, similar to yet oddly unlike those of New Samarkand. Here were the scant human dwellings, clustered like alien mushroom growths amid the towering demi-ruins. Two aluminum-coveralled figures were awaiting her at the rim of the airport. One was tiny, feminine, despite the bulk of her costume, her exotically delicate Eurasian features roughened by wind and sunburn. She was Lao Mei-O'Connell, qualified and elected leader of the pioneer settlement. The other was--Revere Fenlay. It was add to see oneself mirrored in the features of another human for the first time in one's life, Lynne decided. She noted her brother looked unexpectedly healthy, that his handclasp was firm, his eyes probably clearer than her own sleep-puffed ones. His thought was warningly clear. _Don't be fooled by externals, Lynne. These creatures can move in on me every time I open up my mind to receive a message. They're murder!_ Aloud he said, "Lord, I had no idea my counterpart was a beauty."