Paul brought us in smoothly, a couple of small bumps. The comet didn’t have any appreciable gravity, of course, so it was more a docking maneuver than a landing.

The robots had carved out a rectangular hole in the ice, two meters deeper than the habitat was tall. Paul nudged us in there, and the robots slid blocks of ice and dirt in place over us, a kind of ablative protective layer. He detached the small lander and inched it onto the surface. A flexible crawl tube connected the ship’s air lock with ours.

Paul swam through in a space suit, followed by the four engineers. We were all wearing our usual motley, so the five of them looked like an Invasion of the Space People movie.

They all popped out of their suits as quickly as possible, Carmen aiding Paul and the engineers unscrewing each other. They were two couples, Margit and Balasz from Hungary and Karin and Franz from Germany.

They were wearing skinsuits, of course. Margit filled hers in a spectacular way, but Karin was more attractive to me, compact and athletic like Elza. As if there were any scenario where that would make a difference. (“Oh, a Jew,” she says in my dreams, speaking German—“Let me make up for World War II.”)

Margit spread her arms and inhaled hugely, starting a slight rotation. “Ah! Martian air. I feel so deliciously contaminated.”

We shook hands all around and made introductions, though we’d met on-screen. Snowbird and Fly-in-Amber came floating tentatively out of the darkness.

The four newcomers were somewhat wide-eyed at the apparitions, but Balasz croaked and whistled a fair imitation of a greeting.

“The same to you and your family,” Snowbird said. “You are almost correct.”

“Not bad for a human,” Fly-in-Amber grumbled. High praise.

“This is so huge,” Karin said, apparently of the farm. “How many species?”

“About three dozen,” Meryl said, “with another dozen to be planted in a few months. And eight Martian varieties.”

“It will make it easier,” Franz said. “Playing with your food. The same meals over and over can drive you crazy.”

Paul laughed. “Make you do irrational things, like give up Earth for Mars.”

All four of them smiled. “Definitely,” Karin said. “Though it might depend where on Earth you call home.”

“I will miss New York,” I said. “Though it’s not exactly the simple life.”

“Mars has plenty,” Paul said. “Small-town life, but something new every day, every hour. Trade with you in a minute.”

Karin shook her head. “No, I’m not that great a pilot. You can keep your starship.”

“So when are you going to tell them?” Carmen said.

Karin and Franz exchanged glances. “Actually, we were waiting to get your opinion,” he said.

“A pity we aren’t a little farther out,” I said. The outer limit for line-of-sight transmission was set at four hundred million kilometers, the maximum distance between Earth and Mars, and we were still within that.

“It is,” Franz said. “They’ll know we’ve been withholding the fact.”