* * * * * It was a long, long trip from Mars to Earth. Three months on the ship, thirty-five million miles. A trip we had dreamed about for so long, without any real hope of ever making it. But now it was over. We were back on Earth. Back where we had started from. "It's good to be alone, isn't it, Lewis?" Martha leaned back in her chair and smiled up at me. I nodded. It did feel good to be here in the apartment, just the two of us, away from the crowds and the speeches and the official welcomes and the flashbulbs popping. "I wish they wouldn't make such a fuss over us," she said. "I wish they'd leave us alone." "You can't blame them," I said, although I couldn't help wishing the same thing. "We're celebrities. What was it that reporter said about us? That we're part of history...." She sighed. She turned away from me and looked out the window again, past the buildings and the lighted traffic ramps and the throngs of people bustling by outside, people who couldn't see in through the one-way glass, people whom we couldn't hear because the room was soundproofed. "Mars should be up by now," she said. "It probably is." I looked out again, although I knew that we would see nothing. No stars. No planets. Not even the moon, except as a pale half disc peering through the haze. The lights from the city were too bright. The air held the light and reflected it down again, and the sky was a deep, dark blue with the buildings about us towering into it, outlined blackly against it. And we couldn't see the stars.... "Lewis," Martha said slowly. "I never thought it would have changed this much, did you?" "No." I couldn't tell from her voice whether she liked the changes or not. Lately I couldn't tell much of anything from her voice. And nothing was the same as we had remembered it. Even the Earth farms were mechanized now. Factory production lines for food, as well as for everything else. It was necessary, of course. We had heard all the reasons, all the theories, all the latest statistics. "I guess I'll go to bed soon," Martha said. "I'm tired." "It's the higher gravity." We'd both been tired since we got back to Earth. We had forgotten, over the years, what Earth gravity was like. She hesitated. She smiled at me, but her eyes were worried. "Lewis--are you really glad we came back?" It was the first time she had asked me that. And there was only one answer I could give her. The one she expected. "Of course, Martha...." She sighed again. She got up out of the chair and turned toward the bedroom door, and then she paused there by the window looking out at the deep blue sky. "Are you really glad, Lewis?" Then I knew. Or, at least, I hoped. "Why, Martha? Aren't you?" For one long minute she stood beside me, looking up at the Mars we couldn't see. And then she turned to face me once again, and I could see the tears. "Oh, Lewis, I want to go home!"