Nelsen might have argued a few points. But for one thing, he felt too tired. "I'll buy it all, your way, Mitch," he said. "I hope Nance and I can get out of here in a couple more days. Maybe I shouldn't have run out on the Belt. Can't run--thoughts follow you. But now--dammit--I want to go home!" "That's regular, Frank. 'Cause you've got Syrtis. Chronic, now--intermittent. But it'll fade. Same with your girl. Meanwhile, they won't let you go Earthside, but you'll be okay. I'll fly you out, close enough to the Station to get back, any morning before daylight, that you pick... Only, you won't tell, will you, Frank?" "No--I promise--if you think secrecy makes any difference. Otherwise--thanks for everything... By the way--do you ever listen in on outside news?" "Enough. Still quiet... And a fella named Miguel Ramos--with nerve-controlled clamps for hands--got a new, special bubb and took off for Pluto." "No! Damn fool... Almost as loony as you are, Mitch." "Less... Wake up, Nance. Dinner... Chicken--raised right here..." That same afternoon, Frank Nelsen and Nance Codiss sat in the garden. "If I blur, just hold me tight, Frankie," she said. "Everything is still too strange to quite get a grip on--yet... But I'm _not_ going home, Frank--not even when it is allowed. I set out--I'm sticking--I'm not turning tail. It's what people have got to do--in space more than ever..." Even when the seizure of fever came, and the sweat gathered on her lips, and her eyes went wild, she gritted her teeth and just clung to him. She had spunk--admirable, if perhaps destructive. "Love yuh," Frank kept saying. "Love yuh, Sweetie..." Two days later, before the frigid dawn, they saw the last of Mitch Storey and his slender, beautiful wife with her challenging brown eyes. "Be careful that you do right for Mitch and--these _folks_," she warned almost commandingly as the old heli landed in the desert a few miles from the Station. "What would you do--if outsiders came blundering into your world by the hundreds, making trails, killing you with fire? At first, _they_ didn't even fight back." The question was ancient but valid. In spite of his experiences, Nelsen agreed with the logic and the justice. "We'll make up a story, Selma," he said solemnly. Mitch looked anxious. "Human people will find a way, won't they, Frank?" he asked. "To win, to come to Mars and live, I mean--to change everything. Sure--some will be sympathetic. But when there's practical pressure--need--danger--economics...?" "I don't know, Mitch," Nelsen answered in the same tone as before. "Your thickets do have a pretty good defense." But in his heart he suspected that fierce human persistence couldn't be stopped--_as long as there were humans left_. Mitch and his star folk couldn't withdraw from the mainstream of competition--inherent in life--that was spreading again across the solar system. They could only stand their ground, take their fearful chances, be part of it.