And yet it seemed to her that the spectacle was infinitesimally less brilliant than it had been during her early months on the Red Planet. She could remember vividly how, abetted by her husband-to-be, she had helped save the telepaths, on whom all Mars depended for lateral planetwide communications. By themselves they would have succumbed to the maddening onslaught of the bodiless, electricity-devouring aborigines who had so nearly driven her twin insane with their insidious mind-destroying suggestions. She had been virtually shanghaied to Mars by Rolf Marcein and, later, had helped him to discover and harness the E-power sources--those mysterious mineral brains that seemed to exist either on or within every stable planet and atmosphere-bearing satellite. It was E-power that had brought atmospheric moisture to Mars, where virtually no atmosphere existed, and had thereby speeded up the process of making the planet increasingly fertile and habitable. Yet it was E-power that was holding her husband on faraway Earth, when she longed more than ever before to have him by her side. Not, she thought, that Rolf or any man could help her with the ordeal of giving birth to the second baby born on Mars. And it was the result of E-power that would someday blanket the spectacle of the night skies by giving the Red Planet a new atmosphere. II Lynne Marcein rapped on the green plastic door of the three-room suite where Tony and Rana Willis, and their infant daughter made their home, and entered in response to a cheery, “Come in!” The first baby ever to be born on Mars was in the process of having a bath. Its parents--plump, amiable Tony Willis and tiny, vivacious Rana Spinelli--were cooing over the small portable tub like any two of the hundreds of millions of doting new parents on Earth. The bedroom, where the bath had been set up, smelled of talcum and soap and, of course--baby. Rana looked up quickly at Lynne and said, “Well! How goes it with you, little mother?” “_Little_ mother!” exclaimed Tony, who was standing by with the towel. “Aren’t you being medically inexact?” “Don’t be conceited,” Lynne snapped at him. “You had little enough to do with her,” she nodded toward the infant, who was cooing contentedly in her tiny plastic tub. “Well, I did what I could,” he replied with false male modesty. “Watch out, _vinral_--or you’ll get soap in its eye.” “I’ll thank you not to refer to our daughter as ‘it,’” said Rana loftily, lifting the baby out and allowing her husband to wrap the towel around her glowing, plump little pink limbs. Operation bath completed, and the infant safely deposited in its crib with a bottle, the Willises joined Lynne in a cola-fizz and cigarettes. “When is Rolf coming back?” Tony asked. “He doesn’t know,” said Lynne. “At least, he didn’t say. As usual, the transmission time ran out before he could really discuss his plans.”