She stood there framed by the oblong window, the slowly circling stars behind her. Ilona no longer looked haughty or regal. She looked depressed, disheartened.

Jamie shrugged and muttered, "I don’t think you can give up before you’ve even started. No matter what you believe you can’t really say anything definite until you’ve gotten there and looked for yourself. Mars probably has a few surprises in store for you. For all of us."

"Perhaps." Ilona sighed again. Then she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. "It’s always so cold in here! I should have worn my thermal underwear."

"I’m sorry I don’t have a sweater or jacket…"

"It’s my own fault," she said. "I acted on impulse, coming here in just these coveralls."

Jamie grinned at her. "That’s against the rules. How many times has Vosnesensky drilled it into us: think ten times before you do anything."

"Vosnesensky." She growled the name, like a lioness snarling.

"What’s wrong with Mikhail?" Jamie asked. "He doesn’t seem like such a bad guy to me."

"He is a Russian."

"So what?"

"Half my family was murdered by Russians in nineteen fifty-six. My grandmother barely escaped the country. My grandfather was hanged. As if he were a criminal, the Russians hanged him."

"That wasn’t Vosnesensky’s fault. Russia’s changed a lot since then. So has Hungary. It all happened half a century ago."

"It’s easy for you Americans to forgive and forget. Not so easy for me and my people."

Jamie did not know what to say. There’s nothing I can say, he realized. For several moments they stood facing each other while the stars arced around them and the background buzz of electrical equipment hummed its faint note like a distant chorus of Tibetan lamas droning a mantra.

Ilona shuddered. "It is cold up here." She moved closer to Jamie, pressed against him.

"We could go back," Jamie said. Yet he slid one arm around her waist. It seemed the right thing to do.

"No, not yet. I have been worried about you," said Ilona. Her voice was low, sensuous. Her face so close to Jamie’s that he could smell the faint perfume in her honey-blonde hair.

"Worried about me?"

"You seem… withdrawn. Lonely."

He made half a shrug. "We’re a long way from home."

"You avoid us."

"Avoid you?" Jamie felt stupid repeating her words, but she was catching him unprepared.

"Joanna and me. Katrin. You avoid us. Didn’t you realize that?"

"We’re not supposed to get emotionally involved with one another."

"Another rule, I know. But does that mean you can’t sit next to us at meals? I’ve been watching you very carefully. You deliberately stay as far from us as you can."

A hundred thoughts raced through Jamie’s mind. He muttered, "Lead us not into temptation."

"Are you in love with Joanna?"

"No! Of course not."

"Of course not," Ilona mimicked, smiling at him. "The rules forbid us to fall in love, don’t they."

"Not just the rules," Jamie replied.

"You don’t want to get involved emotionally, is that it?"

He nodded, thinking of Edith back in Houston, wondering suddenly where she was, who she was with now.

Ilona wrapped her arms around Jamie’s neck. "When is the last time you made love?"

"What? I don’t think…"

"I’ll wager you haven’t made love since the last time you went home to California, have you?"

"No, you’re wrong."

"Certainly not since we arrived at the assembly station. Not since then."

Jamie’s mind was telling him to disengage from her and get away but his arms were clasping Ilona close to him, holding her tightly against his body. Their lips were almost touching.

"I want to make love with you, Jamie. Right here and now. I want to make love with my strong silent friend here among the stars. I want your strength, your warmth."

She kissed him fiercely, then whispered, "The rules say nothing against fucking, Jamie. Fuck me, red man, fuck me."

Slowly, languidly, almost like a man hypnotized, Jamie pulled open the front of Ilona’s coveralls; the Velcro seam split with the same noise as ripping fabric. As if in a dream he watched himself slide the garment over her shoulders and down her long arms. She wore nothing at all beneath the coveralls. The skin of her bare shoulders and slight breasts looked milky white in the starlight. All the long months of denial exploded in a sudden frenzy as Jamie pulled Ilona to the hard metal flooring, impervious to the cold, uncaring about Mars or Gaia or anything else except this eager tigress. The stars wheeled impassively about them.

The next morning at breakfast Jamie felt terribly embarrassed. He could not face Joanna at all, and found that it was difficult for him even to look into Ilona’s face. She smiled at him, though, from across the narrow wardroom table as he sat down with his tray between Tony Reed and Tadeusz Sliwa, the golden-haired Polish backup biochemist.

Jamie hurried through his breakfast and headed quickly up toward the communications console, where he intended to contact the growing library at Houston and bury himself in reading more details about the odd, oxygen-rich chemistry of the soil of Mars.

"You seem to be in a hurry."

It was Tony Reed, striding up the narrow passageway behind him.

"I’ve got some reading to do," Jamie said.

"Afraid I have to conduct some official business with you, my friend."

Jamie stopped and turned around to face Reed. "Official business?"

"As the ship’s resident physician, yes."

"I don’t understand."

"Please come with me to my office," said Reed, smiling crookedly.

The ship’s infirmary was situated just behind the exercise room. It was a cubicle no larger than any of the individual quarters for the personnel, cramped and crowded even with only two people in it.

Reed slid the accordion-fold door shut and carefully latched it in place. Jamie could hear the groaning squeal of the weight machine from the other side of the partition and the puffing grunts of whoever was working out with it.

"We missed you yesterday afternoon," Tony said, a sly grin on his face.

"I needed some privacy," he said.

"So did Ilona, apparently."

Reed squeezed past Jamie and sat on the edge of the built-in desk, folding his arms across his chest. He nodded toward the stool resting beside the locked medicine cabinet.

Jamie remained standing. He wondered who might be in the exercise room next door and how much he could hear through the thin partition wall.

Reed was practically leering. "You seemed to disappear right after she did. And then you both returned to us at about the same time."

"Hoffman’s had a nervous breakdown," Jamie said. "I was pretty upset by the news."

"So you consoled yourself by taking your turn with our in-house sexual therapist."

"My turn…?" Jamie’s insides went hollow, as if he had suddenly become weightless.

The grin on Tony’s face was positively evil. "Didn’t you know? Ilona’s decided to have her fun with each of the males aboard. Except for Vosnesensky and Ivshenko, of course. She hates the Russkies. I think she’s doing what she’s doing merely to drive our poor Russian leader and his backup insane with jealousy. It might work, too."

Jamie felt as if he were gasping for air.

"Now then." Reed cleared his throat and put on a more serious, professional face. "There’s the matter of your sexual conduct."

Jamie frowned. "My sexual conduct?"

"I am required to give you standard lecture number double-ought one: sexual responsibility and its consequences." The grin had come back to Reed’s face.

"Do you give this lecture to Ilona, too?"

"Yes, of course," He was smirking. "With some variations, of course."

"Every time?"

"Every time I can."