When I was finally able to dress, they had some fancy and futuristic clothes waiting. Formfitting but also form-altering, with smart fabrics that applied light pressure here and there. Very flattering. Hundreds of tiny bright strings hung from the fabric, revealing and concealing. Men who never gave me a second look back then . . . well, they’d be too old to do anything but look now.

They gave me a bowl of vanilla ice cream and put me in a darkened room with a couch and suggested I might want to rest for an hour or so. I got a light turned on but couldn’t find anything to read. No flatscreen or cube obvious; no controls. But I said “space news” out loud and a cube appeared, no projection frame, with a picture of us landing, with this big crawler in the foreground.

Then it showed the president, beaming over his beard, congratulating us and saying that he would be out in California for the landing and the debriefing.

The station noted that live coverage would begin at 7:00, Eastern time. They might have a bigger story than they bargained for.

I did doze for a little while. It was after three when a big blond tech (whose name I didn’t know but who knew parts of me better than Paul did) woke me with the news that I’d been pronounced clean and was wanted at the Green Room.

She stopped me just before I got to the door. “Oh, you wouldn’t know this. The president’s from Kentucky, and he’ll offer you his favorite bourbon. It’s a hundred proof; you shouldn’t refuse, but you might not want too much of it.” Doubly true since all I’d had to eat on this planet was a bowl of ice cream. But hell . . . I could knock back a couple of shots and ask Professor Gold if he’d like to play some Texas Hold-’em.

A lot of famous people do seem larger than life when you meet them. I knew Gold had been a large man from his visit with Paul a half century ago. But now he was an old shaggy bear, moving with slow sureness, glowing with charisma, a man obviously happy with the world he’d helped to make. The world that had twenty- five minutes to go.

His hand was warm and dry, a measured fraction of large strength. “Paul tells me you don’t care for spirits,” he said. “So instead of a tot of Blanton’s, perhaps you’d like a glass of champagne? A big glass?”

An assistant came up with the biggest champagne flute I’d ever seen, and I took my place at a round table. There was only one other empty place—no space for Martians?—and Namir came in, accepted a glass of bourbon, and sat down. He spooned an ice cube from his water glass and put it in the whiskey.