"I _know_, Johnny. But that way. It was so cruel. If he'd just waited." She looked at Johnny Nine. "Johnny?" He was staring at his sandals. "Johnny?" "Yes?" "We aren't--aren't going to reconvert him, are we? Not now?" "No, Marte." Johnny Nine took a deep breath. "Not now. We're going to take him with us, and bury him, really bury him. Put the Earth over him. He'd like that, Marte. Not in the reconverter, but in the cool Earth, the Earth of Home." "Yes," she said very softly, "he'd like that." * * * * * Closer and closer. The Ship was well inside Jupiter, skyrocketing to her rendezvous with the pilot ship. The radio lapse was less than thirty minutes now. The Captain turned from the speaker. "You heard it, Johnny. What can we tell them?" Earth wanted press comments. _Tell us about the trip!_ The Mate stood up. Johnny Nine shuffled his feet. There was an awkward silence. The History of the Ship. Which of them would dare attempt that? The life of twenty-one generations; the death of nineteen; the dream of Earth.... Their little, circumscribed hopes and fears. The little things out of the night drench of a thousand lives. How well they lived together, the mutual respect and the mutual affection.... The little things whose total is life. Or the big things. Like the Great Sickness, during the Second Generation. It had almost finished the Ship. The little things and the big, all rolled into an emotion that meant the Ship. That _was_ the Ship.... The History of the Ship. Who could tell that? Who? The Captain walked to the transmitter. He picked up the microphone and switched the "send" lever over. "Hello, Earth.... Hello, Earth.... Interstellar Flight One.... Interstellar Flight One.... For your press.... Repeat.... For your press...." There was only one thing to say: "We're coming Home!" That single sentence crackled its way across the vastness of space. * * * * * The Ship sped on. Its forty-nine people worked and slept and played, as their fathers before them, and _their_ fathers before that. But their hearts were glad with a new gladness. "We're inside Mars!" Johnny Nine settled back in the pilot seat, aft in the Ship, above the tubes. "We're inside Mars!" No one heard him. He was alone in the cramped pilot quarters. He threw in the forward jets, unused for almost two hundred years, cut in the forward jets to break their fall. Prayed. The great Ship trembled. Johnny Nine's hands skipped, in carefully trained movement, over a bewildering array of firing studs. His eyes seemed to dart everywhere, checking the banks of dials. The tempo increased. For ten years he had trained for this job; he knew it well. Then the Ship began to turn. Slowly, lazily, its nose spewing fire. It took two hours, and by then, Johnny Nine was exhausted. But it was done. His job was done. He had set the Ship safely in an orbit around the Sun, between Mars and Earth.