Their ship was a long low schooner, with five bird’s-wing mast sails. Once beyond the end of the jetty the mast sails extruded their taut triangular expanses, and then, as the wind was from behind, the crew set a big blue kite spinnaker out front. After that the ship leaped into the clear blue swells, knocking up sheets of spray with every slam into an oncoming wave. After the confinement of the Grand Canal’s black banks it felt wonderful to be out on the sea, with the wind in her face and the waves coursing by— it blew all the confusion of Hell’s Gate out of her head— Jackie forgotten— the previous month now understood to be a kind of malignant carnival that she would never have to revisit— she would never return there— the open sea for her, and a life in the wind! “Oh Michel, this is the life for me.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

And at the end of the voyage they were to settle in Odessa, now a seaside town like Hell’s Gate. Living there they could sail out any day they wanted when the weather was nice, and it would be just like this, windy and sunny. Bright moments in time, the living present which was the only reality they ever had; the future a vision, the past a nightmare— or vice versa— anyway only here in the moment could one feel the wind, and marvel at the waves, so big and sloppy! Maya pointed at one blue hillside rolling by in a long irregular fluctuating line, and Michel laughed out loud; they watched more closely, laughed harder; not in years had Maya felt so strongly the sense of being on a different world, these waves just didn’t act right, they flew around and fell over and bulged and wriggled all over their surfaces much more than the admittedly stiff breeze could justify, it looked odd; it was alien. Ah Mars, Mars, Mars!

The seas were always high, the crew told them, on the Hellas Sea. The absence of tides made no difference— what mattered most when it came to waves was gravity, and the strength of the wind. Hearing that as she looked out at the heaving blue plain, Maya’s spirits bounced up in the same wild way. Her g was light, and the winds were strong in her. She was a Martian, one of the first Martians, and she had surveyed this basin in the beginning, helped to fill it with water, helped to build the harbors and put free sailors at sea on it; now she sailed over it herself, and if she never did anything again but sail over it, that would be enough.

And so they sailed, and Maya stood in the bow near the bowsprit, hand on the rail to steady her, feeling the wind and the spray. Michel came and stood with her.