'His account of the trial before Pilate differs considerably from that in the Gospels. And he was there. He says Pilate didn't wash his hands of the whole affair...'

'That,' Bronski said, 'was a reconstruction by later writers who wanted to fix the blame entirely on the Jews. That is, those Jews who refused to accept him as the Messiah and as the parthenogenetic offspring of God and Mary.'

'Yeah, I know. No miracles while Jesus was on Earth. But after they are forced to land on Mars and to dig in, then Jesus appears and Matthias instantly recognises him. And then Jesus performs some miracles. Then...'

'That,' Bronski said, 'explains why the Krsh were converted to Judaism.'

'They wouldn't have accepted them without rigorously produced scientific evidence,' Orme said. 'So what am I to think?'

'Wait and see what happens.'

'You seem to be ready, whatever happens,' Shirazi said. His tone was slightly scornful.

Three weeks before, Bronski had quit shaving, and he had started to grow sidelocks. Instead of going to bed when Orme did, he would sit up in the living room reading the Pentateuch in Hebrew, a direct descendant of the copy which Matthias had brought with him from Earth. Orme had asked him why he was doing all this.

'This isn't Palestine, and I haven't returned to the ways of my forefathers. Not yet. Nor am I anything but an agnostic. But... well... I have had this strange feeling that I've returned home after a long, painful voyage. Home! On Mars! There's no explaining it now. Maybe I never will be able to. Still... here I am, like Ruth standing in the alien corn, and the corn doesn't look so alien.'

'Be sure it's not corny,' Orme said.

'Yes. Perhaps it is pride, an unwillingness to admit that I've been wrong, to destroy my self-image utterly, that keeps me from making the final step. Anyway, even if I went to the synagogue, I wouldn't be admitted. I'd have to acknowledge that Yeshua' is indeed the Messiah. I don't know about that... yet.'

Shirazi had observed all this, but until now he had said nothing to Bronski. He was as much in a quandry as the others. Perhaps more so. He was a Muslim, though not particularly devout. Like his three companions, he'd been shocked to discover that Mars was a Jewish domain. After all, if they'd guessed who might be its inhabitants, they would never have included this possibility in the list. He might have been expected to be uneasy in a place where he was the only Muslim among a million Jews. But these people had never heard of his religion until he had arrived. Besides, Shirazi was a well-educated, urbane man who seldom failed to meld smoothly into any society in which he found himself. In his native land, though, he had got into trouble because of his protests against its censorship policy and its police methods.

Moreover, in some respects the Martian ways paralleled those of his country. The men were circumcised; the women were expected to choose motherhood as their first career; there were certain strict dietary prohibitions. There were certain allotted periods for public prayer, and the Sabbath was well observed.

Also, here Jesus was regarded as a prophet, though the attitude differed from that of the Muslims. These held Jesus in high esteem, but they ranked him as second to Mohammed, whereas here Jesus was the last and the greatest of a line starting with Abraham. The prophet of Islam, Mohammed, was a total nonentity.

Despite the differences, there were enough similarities to make the Iranian feel somewhat at home. And here there was no tension between Muslim and Jew because the Jew still occupied Palestine.

But when it became obvious to Shirazi that Bronski was thinking about 'relapsing', as he put it, into orthodox Judaism he became sarcastic. He'd even hinted that Bronski was an opportunist.

'Besides,' he'd once said during a heated but restrained exchange with the Frenchman, 'you won't really be a Jew. You'll be a Christian.'

'Not so,' Bronski had replied. 'A Christian is one who believes that Jesus is the virgin-begotten child of God and Mary and that he was sent to atone for the sins of the world, to be the scapegoat of ancient Hebrew custom. The Martians regard Jesus as their Messiah, and that is all. Anyway, you Muslims, if you believe Mohammed, must believe in Jesus's virgin birth. It is stated in the Koran that He was indeed born of the virgin Mary. Though Mohammed did say that Jesus was not really crucified. He said that it was a phantom, a ghostly similitude of Jesus, that was nailed to the cross and appeared to die.'

Surprisingly, Shirazi had laughed, and some of the tension had evaporated.

'In the first place, I've met many Christians who disbelieve the virgin-birth story. They think it's a myth, that Jesus was conceived just as you and I were. He was only a man, though the greatest. And there are many Muslims who take certain stories in the Koran in a symbolic or pedagogic sense. I'm one of them.

'So, when you speak of a person as a Muslim or Christian, you must define what sort of Muslim or Christian he is. However, this is getting us nowhere. If I've said anything to offend you, I'm sorry. But I cannot understand why a highly intelligent, highly educated man can be tempted to regress to a primitive state of religion.'

Bronski had thrown his hands up in the air and walked out.

As he went through the door, he had shouted, 'I'm not tempted! There is no temptation! Because this isn't a primitive religion!'

Now, when Shirazi said that Bronski seemed to be ready for any contingency, he was hinting again that Bronski was using protective coloration. So far, he had not said that possibly Bronski was a traitor to Earth.

'What you don't seem to understand,' Bronski said, 'is that religion is a choice, not of the intellect, but of the spirit. By spirit I mean the irrational being of a person. But I am not using "irrational" in a disparaging sense. The irrational is that part of a man that yearns for immortality despite the evidence of his intellect that says there is none. It also yearns for the Creator, his Father, for whom there is much evidence of existence. It acknowledges a Power behind all powers. It is as much a person as his brain, and without it a human being is not truly human. He may be humane, but he is not thoroughly human. That is because...'

Orme said, 'Look. This has gone far enough. You two can continue this some other time. Right now we have to get this show together. We don't have much time left.'

Madeleine said, 'I think you've having a nervous breakdown, Avram.'

'That's enough of that!' Orme said. 'We're all under a hell of a strain. And I'm not sure that Earth won't think we're crazy when they see this. But we have to tell them what is. So, let's get to work.'

Since the viewers on Earth knew what had happened up to the moment that the tunnel door had shut on Orme and Bronski, it was decided to take it from there. The Martians had photographed the two being carried unconscious to their prison. They also had holograms of everything significant that had taken place since - Orme suspected they had recordings of much of the insignificant, too - so the four could pick what they wished to show.

They took turns narrating the segments, in many of which :hey were active participants. Or perhaps not so active, since :hey were being conducted on tours or being taught by the Martians. By the time they were finished, they had what they considered a good overall picture of Martian life and of their experiences since they'd been here.

Of course, Earth would have a thousand questions. These wouldn't be answered, but what could you do in four hours? Besides, many of the questions would have answers which they did not yet know.

'But we should know some of them tomorrow,' Orme said.