After a while, he turned back toward the Memphis lander. It waited like an oversized bullpup with its stubby wings, a homely craft, with ACADEMY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY stenciled across its hull even though it did not yet belong to the Academy. Somebody had placed a lighted wreath in one of the windows, and it glowed, green and warm and familiar. He’d come to dislike the holidays, perhaps because he’d lost whatever religious convictions he’d had as a child. Or perhaps because of his profession. Burying people at Christmastime had always been a strain. The survivors were inevitably more emotional, the grief always more intense. The families were forever asking him why, and he never understood whether they wanted to know why loved ones die, or why they die at Christmas. As if it mattered.

But that night, he was pleased that the holiday had arrived at just this time. Delighted. Almost ecstatic. He was out there with his friends and was becoming aware that he loved the moment, and he loved them. Of them all, no one knew better than he that life was not forever. What he had learned through all the years of watching the dead and their survivors was to enjoy the moment. Not carpe diem, seize the day. That meant something different. Something about making the day pay off. Moving up the food chain. Nick stood on the shelf and simply luxuriated in the experience, in being alive, in this far place, with George and Alyx and the others. It was a Christmas that would not come again. He knew that, and that knowledge made it priceless.

He touched the rocky wall behind him. Although it was cold, frigid, none of that leaked through into the e-suit, in which he remained snug and warm. The miracle of the technology. But he knew that it was a couple of hundred degrees below zero out there, and he wondered whether anyone else had ever stood here. The original occupants must have come this way on occasion, strolling along the shelf as far as they could. It was a natural act for any creature that would want to live in such a place. He looked for prints, but, of course, had there been any other than his own, they were long since filled in.

His light picked out something under the lander.

An indentation. Running almost the length of the vehicle.

It was just inside the tread, parallel to it. Maybe a half meter wide. And recent. It hadn’t even begun to fill in. He stared at it for a time, trying to puzzle out what might have made it, and then he bent down and looked underneath, and saw a second, parallel, line, identical, several meters over. It was half-obscured by the opposite tread.

He got back up and returned to Hutch. She was still climbing around up near the windscreen. Too busy to notice him.

The alien vehicle had treads, but they were farther apart than the tracks beneath the lander. And wider. Whatever had set down back there, it had been a different vehicle.

The burial party.

THEY ALL TROOPED out to look. Hutch took pictures. George repeated Nick’s observation: “Can’t have been here long ago.”

They looked up at the sky. Nick saw the Memphis, a star moving slowly down the western rim. Then, subdued, they returned inside.

IT WAS TIME to go get the pocket dome.

A set of air tanks had a life of six hours. Alyx, George, and Nick refilled theirs, and Hutch left three extra pairs. Just in case. Then she and Tor climbed into the lander and returned to the Memphis.

Hutch scanned the measurements from the windscreen for Bill and set him to work.

They filled the dome’s water and air tanks, and loaded everything into the cargo space. They added some reddimeals and assorted snacks and a few bottles of wine.

Tor was clearly enjoying himself. With his dome, he was becoming a central figure in the Contact Society effort. And he kept talking about the significance of the discovery. “It’ll be a merry Christmas on Vertical,” he said.

While they were completing the work, she could not avoid being conscious of the fact that they were truly alone for the first time. But if Tor had any notions about taking advantage of the situation, he suppressed them. Once or twice he could not have helped catching her looking at him in what must have been an odd way. But he let it go.

“Hutch.” Bill’s voice. “I have a tentative result.”

“Already?” Tor’s eyebrows went up. “He’s only had the data a half hour.”

“He’s pretty quick,” said Hutch. “What have you got, Bill?”

“Did you want the details or simply the result?”

“Just tell us how long the lander’s been on the shelf.”

“The numbers are hardly definite, but I would say between three and four thousand years.”

That was a shock. The place just didn’t feel that old. Nowhere close to it. “Bill, are you sure?”

“Of course not. But the figure is correct if the current intensity of the solar wind is typical.”

ON THE RETURN flight, Hutch maneuvered carefully, trying to avoid setting down on the tracks of the third lander. She didn’t entirely succeed. But they’d gotten pictures, and they could re-create them virtually.

Alyx and George were waiting for them. They told Hutch they’d mistaken her for Santa, and did a couple of other lame jokes about not being sure whether the sleigh came this far out.

It reminded Hutch that they had no gifts to distribute. In all probability, she thought, had they not encountered the house, the retreat—it was a retreat really, there was no way to deny that now—had they simply been sailing along in the Memphis, nobody would have thought about gifts. They’d have sung a few songs about mistletoe and sleigh bells and Christmas on Luna, raised some toasts, and that would have been it. But here, within this house overlooking the ultimate view, amid furnishings so large that they all felt once again like children—Where are my electric trains, Dad? — Hutch longed to give out some stuff, cologne for Alyx, and maybe a loud shirt, a red shirt with golden dragons on it for Tor, and a few good mysteries for George (who had a taste for whodunits), and something appropriately personal for Nick. She liked Nick and would have liked to signal her affection in some oblique way. But she wasn’t sure what would work. Not that it mattered here, where the nearest mall was a couple of hundred light-years off to the right.

They set up the pocket dome in the courtyard, at the far end, away from the graves. It was simple enough, just a matter of pulling the trigger and watching it inflate itself, and then connecting water and air tanks, installing power cells, and turning it on. Unlike the e-suits, it couldn’t subsist on vacuum energy alone, but required a direct power source.

Then they retreated inside, turned off their suits, and broke out the snacks and drinks. George announced that it was appropriate at this time of year to toast the captain at the beginning of festivities, and they did. Then they toasted George, their “beloved leader.” And Alyx, “the most beautiful woman in the sims.” And Nick, “who would be there to see them all off.” (Nick assured them he would do his best by them.) And finally Tor, “our own Rembrandt.” They sang a few carols, ate and drank and sang some more, and everyone had a good time.

George offered a toast “to us.” “As long as the human race endures,” he said, raising his glass and struggling not to spill anything, “it will remember the voyage of the Memphis.”

“Hear, hear.” Drink it down, refill, and let’s have another.

THE ALIEN LANDER had made its last flight onto the ledge a thousand years or so before the birth of Christ. What had been happening in the world at the time?

Rome was a distant dream.

Egypt must have been building pyramids, although Hutch thought it had passed through that phase by then.

Sumer was already pretty old, but Homer wouldn’t be born for another two or three centuries. Athens hadn’t shown up yet on the radar.