But she had seen something; because just before full darkness, there was a knocking at the door. Her heart shuddered like the rover on its shock absorbers, she ran to a window, looked out. Figures the color of the rock, waving hands. Human beings.

It was a little group of Red ecoteurs. They had recognized her rover, they said after she let them inside, from the description given by the people at the Tempe refuge. They had been hoping they might run into her, and so they were happy; laughing, chattering, moving around the cabin to touch her, young tall natives with stone eyeteeth and gleaming young eyes, some of them Orientals, some white, some black. All happy. She recognized them from Pavonis Mons, not individually, but as a group; the young fanatics. Again she felt a chill.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To Botany Bay,” a young woman replied. “We’re going to take out the Whitebook labs.”

“And Boone Station,” another added.

“Ah no,” Ann said.

They went still, looked at her carefully. Like Kasei and Dao in Lastflow.

“What do you mean?” the young woman said.

Ann took a breath, tried to figure that out. They were watching her closely.

“Were you there in Sheffield?” she asked.

They nodded; they knew what she meant.

“Then you should know already,” she said slowly. “It’s pointless to achieve a red Mars by pouring blood over the planet. We have to find another way. We can’t do it by killing people. Not even by killing animals or plants, or blowing up machines. It won’t work. It’s destructive. It doesn’t appeal to people, do you understand? No one is won over. In fact they’re put off. The more we do things like that, the more green they become. So we defeat our purpose. If we know that and do it anyway, then we’re betraying the purpose. Do you understand? We aren’t doing it for anything but our own feelings. Because we’re angry. Or for thrills. We have to find another way.”

They stared at her, uncomprehending, annoyed, shocked, contemptuous. But riveted. This was Ann Clayborne, after all.