Sax stood, looking bored, and pushed off toward the kitchen.  The hall was filled with the seashell roar of many small discussions, some of them acrimonious in tone.  A lot of people were angry at Arkady, clearly; and others were angry at them for getting upset.

Maya followed Sax into the kitchen.  As he cleaned his tray he sighed.  "People are so emotional.  Sometimes it seems like I'm stuck in an endless performance of the play No Exit."

"That's the one where they can't get out of a little room?"

He nodded.  "Where hell is other people.  I hope we don't prove the hypothesis."

# # #

A few days later the landers were ready.  They would descend over a period of five days;  only the Phobos team would stay in what was left of the Ares, guiding it to its near-docking with the little moon.   Arkady, Alex, Dmitri, Roger, Samantha, Edvard, Janet, Raul, Marina, Tatiana, and Elena said their farewells, absorbed already in the task at hand, promising to descend as soon as the Phobos station was built.

The night before the descent Maya couldn't sleep.  Eventually she gave up trying, and pulled herself through the rooms and corridors, up to the hub. Every object was sharp-edged with sleeplessness and adrenalin, and every familiarity of the ship was countered or overwhelmed by some alteration, a lashed-down stack of boxes or a dead-end in a tube.  It was as if they had already left the Ares.  She looked around at it one last time, drained of emotion.  Then she pulled herself through the tight locks, into the landing vehicle she had been assigned to.  Might as well wait there. She climbed into her spacesuit, feeling, as she so often did when the real moment came, that she was only going through another simulation.  She wondered if she would ever escape that feeling, if being on Mars would be enough to end it.  It would be worth it just for that:  to make her feel real for once!  She settled into her chair.