"We feel," said the President, "it would be dangerous to allow you to go out among the people. They've been informed that your statement wasn't entirely true. This was necessary, to avoid a panic. The people simply must not know the whole truth." He paused. "Now we ask you to keep in mind that whatever we decide about the two of you will be for the good of the people." Michael and Mary were silent. "You'll wait outside the council chambers," the President went on, "until we have reached our decision." As the man and woman were led away, the pumps beat in the stillness, and at the edge of the shrinking seas the salt thick waters were being pulled into the distilleries, and from them into the tier upon tier of artificial gardens that sat like giant bee hives all around the shoreline; and the mounds of salt glistening in the sunlight behind the gardens were growing into mountains. * * * * * In their rooms, Michael and Mary were talking through the hours, and waiting. All around them were fragile, form-fitting chairs and translucent walls and a ceiling that, holding the light of the sun when they had first seen it, was now filled with moonlight. Standing at a circular window, ten feet in diameter, Michael saw, far below, the lights of the city extending into the darkness along the shoreline of the sea. "We should have delivered our message by radio," he said, "and gone back into space." "You could probably still go," she said quietly. He came and stood beside her. "I couldn't stand being out in space, or anywhere, without you." She looked up at him. "We could go out into the wilderness, Michael, outside the force walls. We could go far away." He turned from her. "It's all dead. What would be the use?" "I came from the Earth," she said quietly. "And I've got to go back to it. Space is so cold and frightening. Steel walls and blackness and the rockets and the little pinpoints of light. It's a prison." "But to die out there in the desert, in that dust." Then he paused and looked away from her. "We're crazy--talking as though we had a choice." "Maybe they'll have to _give_ us a choice." "What're you talking about?" "They went into hysterics at the sight of those bodies in the picture. Those young bodies that didn't die of old age." He waited. "They can't stand the sight of people dying violently." Her hand went to her throat and touched the tiny locket. "These lockets were given to us so we'd have a choice between suffering or quick painless death.... We still have a choice." He touched the locket at his own throat and was very still for a long moment. "So we threaten to kill ourselves, before their eyes. What would it do to them?" He was still for a long time. "Sometimes, Mary, I think I don't know you at all." A pause. "And so now you and I are back where we started. Which'll it be, space or Earth?" "Michael." Her voice trembled. "I--I don't know how to say this."