Something in her voice stilled the questions he wanted to ask. She seemed to sense what was in his mind, for she said quickly. "I don't think father has any enemies now on Mars. He's going to give the colonists back their land. Not because he has to, but because he wants to. They came to his assistance when they could have used the way he cheated and robbed them as an excuse for not helping him at all. There are few men who wouldn't feel grateful, who wouldn't be shaken by remorse. But I think it goes deeper than that. Even now I'm not completely sure, but I think he knows it's the only way he can free himself from the prison he's been building around himself since I was a little girl." She was silent for an instant, while the pain in her eyes seemed to deepen. Then she said, "I can't leave him now, darling. Not right away. It would be too cruel a blow." Ahead now Corriston could see three of the colonists coming toward him. They were less than forty feet away. "I think I know how it is," he said. "When you've been through too much, you just go dead inside. You can feel sympathy for someone very close, like your father. But that's about all...." "Darling, that's not what I mean. We'll be apart, but just for a little while. It will be so short a time we won't even miss it later on ... two or three weeks, at most. And this time you won't have to wonder about me at all." Corriston noticed then for the first time that her hair had been blown in all directions by the wind. He remembered how, on their first meeting, it had been disarranged in much the same way. She'd been wearing a beret then, and just the casual tilt of her hat had done the fluffing. But wind or no wind, he'd always like the way her hair looked, the gold in it, and the way it set off the great beauty of her face. "I'd be more than unreasonable if I tried to pick flaws in a promise like that," he said. "You can never go home again," someone had once said. You can never go home because people change and places change with them, and familiar scenes take on an aspect of strangeness as the old, well-loved landmarks fade. But in space, the landmarks are as wide and deep as the gulfs between the stars, and it is not too difficult for a man to return to a steel-ribbed Gibraltar in space and experience again the emotions he felt when he first sighted it, and hear again the long thunder-roll of the ships berthing and taking off. The ship which was bringing Corriston back had begun to loom up behind the telemetric aerials with her bow slanting forward. She had almost berthed, and, standing with his face half in shadow, Commander Clement watched the landing lights flashing on and off and wondered just what he would say to the young lieutenant he'd never met--the very famous lieutenant who would be emerging from the boarding port and descending the ramp any minute now.