Either would be poison to the Martians, of course, but they brought out some special purple fungus and what looked and smelled like sulfurous swamp water.

I held up my glass to them and croaked out a greeting that was traditional for such occasions, which roughly translates as “Well, another year.” Snowbird and Namir exchanged toasts in Japanese and bowed, which in the case of the Martian looked weirdly like a horse in dressage. Plastic glasses were clicked all around.

The cake was sinfully excellent. “We should have this every day,” Elza said. “In five years, we’ll be bigger than the Martians.”

“That would be attractive,” Fly- in-Amber admitted, “but I don’t think you have that much honey.”

You can never tell when they’re joking. They have the same complaint about us.

Moonboy had his small synth keyboard, and he played a few words for Snowbird, who responded with a thrumming, crackling sound, then the thump of laughter.

“I told her she was looking slim,” he said, “and she answered that the food here was lousy.”

That was actually a pretty subtle joke. Martians don’t much care what they eat, but she knew about that attitude from humans.

After we finished the cake and tej, we switched to regular wine and other alcohol, and Snowbird asked whether Namir would bring out his balalaika and do a duet with Moonboy. Namir asked Dustin whether he could stand it, and he said that once a year wouldn’t kill him.

By the time Namir had retrieved the balalaika from the workshop, Moonboy had figured out how to simulate a primitive accordion, and with his sensitive ear he had no trouble squeezing out chords that matched the Eastern European and Israeli tunes Namir knew, and did an occasional simulated-clarinet solo, what he called klezmer style. Most of it was new to me, and I was glad of the Martian request.

When we went to bed, Paul and I made love, even though it wasn’t Saturday (badminton brings out the beast in him).

Afterward, he was restless. “I’m the most useless pilot in history.” “I don’t know. The guy in charge of the Titanic didn’t exactly earn his paycheck.”

“This morning while you were gardening, I went up to the shuttle and put it through some simulations for landing.”

A few years premature. “Practice makes perfect?”

“I could do them in my sleep, which is the problem. There are really only four basic situations in the VR—Earth, Mars, Moon, and zero- gee rendezvous. I can fiddle with the parameters. But I’m not really learning anything.”

“Well, it’s not rocket science, as they used to say. Except that it is rocket science. And you’re the best. I read that somewhere.”