While it rolled she wandered around the driver’s compartment, her mind racing. Out of control. Nothing to be done but laugh and endure it. Strike the walls, stare out the windows. The bear was gone but it wasn’t. She looked it up: Ursus maritimus, ocean bear; the Inuit called it Tôrnâssuk, “the one who gives power.” It was like the landslide that had almost caught her in Melas Chasma, now a part of her life forever. Facing the landslide she had not moved a muscle; this time she had run like hell. Mars could kill her, no doubt it would kill her, but no big zoo creature from Earth was going to kill her, not if she could help it. Not that she was so enamored of life, far from it; but one should be free to choose one’s death. As she had chosen in the past, twice at least. But Simon and then Sax— like little brown bears— had snatched her death away from her. She still didn’t know what to make of that, how to feel about it. Her mind was racing so fast. She held on to the back of the driver’s seat. Finally she reached forward and punched Sax’s old First Hundred number on the rover’s screen keyboard, XY23, and waited for the AI to route the call to the shuttle returning Sax and the others to Mars; and after a while there he was, with his new face, staring into a screen.

“Why did you do it?” she shouted. “It’s my death to choose as I please!”

She waited for the message to reach him. Then it did and he jumped, the image of him jiggled. “Because—” he said, and stopped.

Ann felt a chill. That was just what Simon had said, after he had pulled her back in out of the chaos. They never had a reason, only life’s idiot because.

Sax went on: “I didn’t want— it seemed like such a waste— what a surprise to hear from you. I’m glad.”

“To hell with that,” Ann said.

She was about to cut the connection when he started speaking again— they were in simultaneous transmission now, alternating messages, “It was so I could talk to you, Ann. I mean it was for myself— I didn’t want to be missing you. I wanted you to forgive me. I wanted to argue with you more and— and make you see why I’ve done what I’ve done.”

His chatter stopped as abruptly as it had started, and then he looked confused, even frightened. Perhaps he had just heard “To hell with that.” She could scare him, no doubt of that.

“What crap,” she said.

After a while: “Yes. Um— how are you doing? You look. . . .”

She cut the connection. I just outran a polar bear! she shouted in her mind. I was almost eaten by your stupid games!