At any rate, there was no reason to assume that anyone who happened to be here would be unfriendly to him, in case they met by chance. He saw no reason to worry about it. Finishing breakfast, Dark went down to the storeroom and picked out three marsuits, for Old Beard, Happy and Shadow. There was a large-sized suit there that he thought might accommodate Happy's bulk, but he wondered how Shadow, with his flat build, was going to manage one. Nakedness felt quite natural to Dark, especially since he remembered his identity as Brute, but it occurred to him that it would look peculiar to anyone he might meet before leaving Ultra Vires--or, for that matter, on his way back to the Canfell Hydroponic Farm. So he donned a marsuit himself, leaving off the helmet. Carrying the other three marsuits, he went down the corridor to the motor pool. Dark remembered that Goat had always kept four groundcars on hand. There were three here now, all in advanced stages of dismantlement. At one of them, a small figure in black tunic and loose trousers was bending over, head and arms plunged into the bowels of the engine. Dark hesitated. He had found his intruder, perhaps a traveler who had run into engine trouble in the desert and had fortuitously been near enough to take shelter here while making repairs. But, again, there was no reason to anticipate unfriendliness. Carrying his marsuits, Dark walked up to the groundcar, overhearing a muffled bit of profanity as he approached. The unfortunate mechanic evidently heard his footsteps, because he was greeted with: "I wish to Phobos you'd stay down here and _try_ to help me, instead of spending all your time snooping around this deserted shack!" The voice was muffled, but it was definitely feminine and definitely irritated. Dark grinned and replied drolly: "I'm sorry, but this is the first time you've asked me to help you." With an audible gasp, the woman disentangled herself, in dangerous haste, from the groundcar engine and faced Dark. They stared at each other, in mutual shocked recognition. There was Dark Kensington, bearded, his arms full of marsuits, and there was Maya Cara Nome, sleeves rolled up, her lovely face streaked with grease. Dark's jaw dropped. Maya's lips formed a round, astonished O. Then, with a squeal, she hurled herself on him, throwing her arms around his neck. Dark staggered back, overwhelmed by marsuits, an abundance of wriggling femininity and a babble of happy and-completely unintelligible words gushed against his bearded cheek. He managed to disentangle himself by the dual process of dropping the marsuits and holding Maya forcibly at arm's length. She gazed up into his face, her own awed and radiant, and was able to reduce her own words to connected sentences. "You're not here," she said positively. "You can't be here. You're dead. I saw you killed. You must be one of the ghosts of Ultra Vires."