The battalion commander identified herself and demanded an explanation. “Of course we know what you are. But we’ve been alongside you for weeks and have gotten no cooperation.”

“I am not under your command,” he pointed out. “This is not anybody’s military expedition. Is there still a United Nations?”

“Not as such, captain. But all nations are united.”

“Well, let me talk to whoever’s in charge. With some science types listening in.”

“This is completely against protocol. You—”

“I don’t think you have a protocol covering how to deal with a half-century-old spaceship returning from a mission to save the planet from destruction. Or does it happen all the time?”

“We have been expecting you, sir, since your message arrived last month. But when the ship did not respond as it approached Earth, we had to expect the worst.”

“The worst did not happen. Now I’m going to break contact and will talk only when I can talk to someone who outranks everyone who outranks you. Out for now.” He cut off the battalion commander in midbluster and spun half around. “Drink?”

I tossed him the squeeze bag of ersatz Bordeaux. “Holding out for champagne, myself. In gravity.”

He took a long drink, two swallows, and passed it to Namir, who had been sitting silent.

“Suit yourself,” Namir said to me, his voice husky. “It might be a long wait.”

I unstrapped and swam up front to visit with Paul and watch the monitor. The wait was less than a minute.

An elderly man with a seamed dark face and white full beard came into the monitor as it pinged. A voice said, “Mervyn Gold, president of the United Americas.”

“Paul?” the old man said. “ ‘Crash’ Collins?”

Paul stabbed a finger at the camera button. “Professor Gold!”

He smiled broadly. “We’ve both come up in the world, Paul.”

Paul laughed, and said to me, “He was my history prof at Boulder. You met him.”

Subtract fifty years and the beard. He’d come to Little Earth with some government agency and talked with Paul for hours through the quarantine window.

“Amazing,” Gold said. “You don’t look a day older. You’ll be hearing that a lot, I suppose.”

And from really old people, I thought.

“The Others did some trick with time.”

The old man nodded. “I saw your transmission from turnaround. Some people thought it was all a trick, you know. If they’d prevailed, you wouldn’t have made it to Earth.”

I hadn’t thought of that possibility. Just as well.

“I’m glad you didn’t listen to them.”

“Oh, I listen to everyone; comes with the job. But I don’t have to obey anyone.” He shuffled some papers, an everyday gesture that we hadn’t seen in some time. “First, let me tell you that you will come to Earth, not New Mars. The quarantine was lifted, oh, about twelve years ago.”

“That’ll be great.”