Maya did not like the direction the conversation was taking. She was relieved by the appearance of the waiter with their meals of thick, steaming steaks, with all the necessary trimmings. "It will be a long time before we can be served anything like this by teleportation," she said, laughing. "But, Mr. Kensington--" "Dark, if you don't mind." "Very well. Dark, you say that you drove here from Mars City. How did you avoid the copter patrols that were out trying to intercept the escaping rebels?" "As a matter of fact, I didn't, and that's a very peculiar thing," he said thoughtfully. "One of them got me just outside Mars City and blasted the dome of my groundcar." "I noticed you were wearing a marsuit when you registered here, and Gren said you were having the dome repaired." "That's what's peculiar about it. I wasn't wearing the marsuit when the copter broke my dome. I didn't have any protection at all. The groundcar went off the road and overturned. I don't know how long I was unconscious, but it was evidently long enough for the copter to look me over, decide I was dead, and move on out of sight. What I can't understand is why I didn't asphyxiate." "You mean that you were protected by no oxygen equipment at all?" "None. I returned to consciousness and I was lying there with the dome broken wide open and my face bare to the Martian air. I got into my marsuit right away, of course, but that took a few minutes in addition to the time I was unconscious. And I didn't feel restricted by the lack of air. I wasn't even breathing. And I felt that I didn't need to!" "That is peculiar," she said meditatively. "Tell me, do you know a man named Goat Hennessey?" "You're the second person who's asked me that recently," said Dark. "I knew him well, many years ago, but I haven't seen him in years. Why do you ask?" "Because the only case I've heard about of any human being able to live without oxygen in the Martian atmosphere involved some genetic experiments of Goat Hennessey, before the government made him stop them and destroy the creatures he'd been experimenting with." Dark laughed. "I can assure you I'm not one of Goat's genetic experiments," he said. "Goat and I were colleagues in this rebel movement twenty-five years ago, before I was hit by a period of amnesia that I've just come out of." She stared at him. "A twenty-five year period of amnesia? Impossible! You're not more than twenty-five years old," she said positively. "If what people tell me is correct, I'm nearer sixty," said Dark. "Terrestrial years, of course." "Of course. But I don't believe it." Dark shrugged, and cut another bite of steak. He seemed to be enjoying his meal quite as much as though he were not her prisoner and she his captor--as, indeed, she was, too.