"Hello, Rob. Klara." It was the Brazilian member of the detail, who turned out to be Francy Hereira. "Looks like a bad one?"

"Oh," I said, "at least we came back. But Kahane's in bad shape. And we came up empty."

He nodded sympathetically, and said something in what I took to be Spanish to the Venusian member of the detail, a short, plump woman with dark eyes. She tapped me on the shoulder and led me away to a little cubicle, where she signaled me to take off my clothes. I had always thought that they'd have men searching men and women searching women, but, come to think of it, it didn't seem to matter much. She went over every stitch I owned, both visually and with a radiation counter, then examined my armpits and poked something into my anus. She opened her mouth wide to signal I should open mine, peered inside, and then drew back, covering her face with her hand. "Jure nose steenk very moch," she said. "What hoppen to jou?"

"I got hit," I said. "That other fellow, Sam Kahane. He went crazy. Wanted to change the settings."

She nodded doubtfully, and peered up my nose at the packed gauze. She touched the nostril gently with one finger. "What?"

"In there? We had to pack it. It was hemorrhaging a lot."

She sighed. "I shood pool eet out," she meditated, and then shrugged. "No. Poot clothes on. All right."

So I got dressed again and went out into the lander chamber, but that wasn't the end of it. I had to be debriefed. All of us did, except Sam; they had already taken him away to Terminal Hospital.

You wouldn't think there was much for us to tell anybody about our trip. All of it had been fully documented as we went along; that was what all the readings and observations were for. But that wasn't the way the Corporation worked. They pumped us for every fact, and every recollection; and then for every subjective impression and fleeting suspicion. The debriefing went on for two solid hours, and I was -- we all were -- careful to give them everything they asked. That's another way the Corporation has you. The Evaluation Board can decide to give you a bonus for anything at all. Anything from noticing something nobody has noticed before about the way the spiral gadget lights up, to figuring out a way of disposing of used sanitary tampons without flushing them down the toilet. The story is that they try hard to find some excuse to throw a tip to crews that have had a hard time without coming up with a real find. Well, that was us, all right. We wanted to give them every chance we could for a handout.