The next day, bathed and smiling, Doran still did not look quite Earthly to him. She was browned by Martian sun but the real difference that had come into her strong beauty was a thing of multiple detail, like the mark of persons used to the sea contrasted with those born to the plains--but deeper. Scrubbed fairly clean, Will remained an urchin of Mars. Also scrubbed, and shaved, Joe felt more comfortable. Yet he knew that basically this restored nothing. * * * * * A day later he was wandering around outside the hothouse, trying to plan needed agricultural projects, when a faint scrape of pebbles made him wheel warily. "People! Rescue!" were his first eager thoughts. But then he saw that the three figures, two large and one small, were creatures attuned to Mars in the same way as himself, and as helpless. Yet when old friends were recognized, in spite of the deep changes, Joe Dayton felt a joyous lift. "Doc Lorring!" he shouted. "Kettrich. And Tillie. Hey! Hey, Doran! Will! Come here!" Doctor Lorring's tomboy daughter, a bit younger than Will, showed a grinning dirty face through a battered air-hood and said "Hi." "We were trying to follow you most of the time, Dayton," Lorring stammered. "We hoped to find you and Doran, and maybe the Terry boy. But our tractor broke down, and we had to live off the land. While we still had the vehicle there didn't seem much reason why Tillie shouldn't come along. We'd begun to give up hope of finding any of you alive." Minutes were spent questioning and explaining. They all went into the sealed hothouse. Kettrich, the biologist, had even saved a little coffee. "For a celebration, if we ever located any of you missing ones," he said to Joe and Doran. Kettrich sighed and went on, "Chief Vitrac, Lorson, and a dozen others are the only old timers left at the Port. The others have all gone, with Dolph Terry and the tourists. Humans are about done with Mars though I suppose a few will trickle out here from time to time." With contemplative relish Doran sipped coffee brewed with crudely filtered water on an ato-stove. She smiled like any woman who has her man, and has found a place and a purpose.