He was trying to soften the disappointment. But nothing could. If only I could make him realize that. "I know it's changed," I said. "But it's _home_. Don't you see? We're Earthmen still. I guess that never changes. And now that we're old, we're aliens here." "We're all aliens here, Mr. Farwell." "No," I said desperately. "Maybe you are. Maybe a lot of the city people are. But our neighbors were born on Mars. To them Earth is a legend. A place where their ancestors once lived. It's not real to them...." He turned and crossed the room and came back to me. His smile was pitying. "If you went back," he said, "you'd find you were a Martian, too." I couldn't reach him. He was friendly and pleasant and he was trying to make things easier, and it wasn't any use talking. I bent my head and choked back the sobs I could feel rising in my throat. "You've lived a full life," Duane said. "You were one of the pioneers. I remember reading about your ship when I was a boy, and wishing I'd been born sooner so that I could have been on it." Slowly I raised my head and looked up at him. "Please," I said. "I know that. I'm glad we came here. If we had our lives to live over, we'd come again. We'd go through all the hardships of those first few years, and enjoy them just as much. We'd be just as thrilled over proving that it's possible to farm a world like this, where it's always freezing and the air is thin and nothing will grow outside the greenhouses. You don't need to tell me what we've done, or what we've gotten out of it. We know. We've had a wonderful life here." "But you still want to go back?" "Yes," I said. "We still want to go back. We're tired of living in the past, with our friends dead and nothing to do except remember." He looked at me for a long moment. Then he said slowly, "You realize, don't you, that if you went back to Earth you'd have to stay there? You couldn't return to Mars...." "I realize that," I said. "That's what we want. We want to die at home. On Earth." * * * * * For a long, long moment his eyes never left mine. Then, slowly, he sat down at his desk and reached for a pen. "All right, Mr. Farwell," he said. "I'll give you a visa." I couldn't believe it. I stared at him, sure that I'd misunderstood. "Sixty-five years...." He shook his head. "I only hope I'm doing the right thing. I hope you won't regret this." "We won't," I whispered. Then I remembered that we were still short of money. That that was why I'd come to the spaceport originally. I was almost afraid to mention it, for fear I'd lose everything. "Is there--is there some way we could be excused from the insurance?" I said. "So we could go back this year? We're three hundred short."