Speaking of torture, my physical therapy increased, and month by month I moved down through quarter gee and half gee to where I could eventually be trusted to walk around on Epsilon and occasionally pick up something light. Dan and I resumed making love, and there were happy surprises there. Every woman should have her nervous system rewired after menopause.

I spent an hour or so every day with John. He seemed as alert as ever, though weaker. I talked with him, or at him, a lot about the strange adventure, the testing, whatever, I’d been through. I had never missed so much his ability to talk. Of all the people I’ve known, he would be the one most likely to help me understand. That was partly his wisdom, both worldly and abstract, and partly the universe of pain we shared now.

He would be involved, soon enough. Maybe I felt that. I don’t believe in the supernatural, or tell myself that I don’t, but those creatures (the eveloi, as they told us to call them) obviously have some control over time. Maybe I was forewarned in some way.

In another year I was well enough to return to the surface. It was hard to say good-bye to John, after seeing him every day. I had my old Liaison job back, so I would see him periodically, but it was going to be the way it had been before. Afraid that each parting would be the last. He was only eighty, Earth-years-minus-cryptobiosis, but he looked and obviously felt a lot older. Besides, as we’d been warned, a person who’s had one serious stroke usually dies of another one.

But it was glorious to step out of the shuttle and into the warm breeze. I’d spent a lot more time in orbit, in hospital, then I had on the planet, but emotionally this was home. It was spring, and the perfume of blossoms was intoxicating, a mixture of transplanted Earth smells and alien ones. The lift door was an open gate now; I could look out past Hilltop and see how Lakeside had grown. Crop and orchard land had more than tripled, but it was laid out carefully with respect to the natural forest line, in accordance with the eveloi’s wishes.

Most of the eveloi had moved to an island on the other side of the planet, asking that we stay away from them for the time being. Two had remained behind with us, though, so I wasn’t surprised to see one of them among the welcoming committee at the loading dock. After my tearful embraces with Sandra and Charlee, and less emotional hellos for Odenwald, Dennison, and Doc Bishop, I saw the creature float forward and extend its pink feeler toward my head. I closed my eyes and cringed, ready for the slight pain.