But then when Sasha claimed in a low voice that Hiroko had plans to fertilize several of her own ova with sperm from all the men on the Ares, and store them cryonically for later growth on Mars, Maya could only sweep up her tray and head for the dishwashers, feeling something like vertigo. They were becoming strange.

# # #

The red crescent grew to the size of a quarter, and the feeling of tension grew as well, as if it were the hour before a thunderstorm, and the air charged with dust and creosote and static electricity. As if the god of war were really up there on that blood dot, waiting for them. The green wall panels inside the Ares were now flecked with yellow and brown, and the afternoon light was thick with sodium vapor's pale bronze.

People spent hours in the bubble dome, watching what none among them but John had seen before. The exercise machines were in constant use, the simulations performed with renewed enthusiasm. Janet took a swing through the toruses, sending back video images of all the changes in their little world; then she threw her glasses on a table, and resigned her post as reporter. "Look, I'm tired of being an outsider," she said. "Every time I walk into a room everyone shuts up, or starts preparing their official line. It's like I was a spy for an enemy!"

"You were," Arkady said, and gave her a big hug.

At first no one volunteered to take over her job. Houston sent messages of concern, then reprimands, then veiled threats. Now that they were about to reach Mars, the expedition was getting a lot more TV time, and the situation was about to "go nova," as mission control put it. They reminded the colonists that this burst of publicity would eventually reap the space program all kinds of benefits; the colonists had to film and broadcast what they were doing, to stimulate public support for the later Mars missions on which they were going to depend. It was their duty to transmit their stories!

Frank got on the screen and suggested that mission control could concoct their video reports out of footage from robot cameras. Hastings, head of Mission Control in Houston, was visibly infuriated by this response. But as Arkady said, with a grin that extended the realm of the question to everything: "What can they do?"

Maya shook her head. They was sending a bad signal, she knew; and revealing what the video reports had so far hidden, that the group was splintering into rival cliques. Which indicated Maya's own lack of control over the Russian half of the expedition. She was about to ask Nadia to take over the reporting job as a favor to her, when Phyllis and some of her friends in B torus volunteered for the job. Maya, laughing at the expression on Arkady's face, gave it to them. Arkady pretended not to care. Irritated, Maya said in Russian, "You know you've missed a chance! A chance to shape our reality, in effect!"