They jammed into the tree-shaded residential square where gigantic television screens had been set up in front of high-rise glass-walled apartment buildings. They stood on the benches in the square and clambered up the trees for a better view of the screens. They cheered and cried and shouted as they watched the space-suited explorers, one by one, climb down the ladder and stand on that barren rocky desert beneath the strange pink sky.

When Joanna Brumado spoke her brief words they cheered all the louder, drowning out the little speeches of those who followed her.

Then they took up the chant: "Brumado-Brumado-Bru-ma-do! Bru-ma-do! Bru-ma-do!"

Inside the apartment that had been lent to him for the occasion, Alberto Brumado smiled ruefully at his friends and associates. He had watched his daughter step onto the surface of Mars with a mixture of fatherly pride and anxiety that had brought tears to the corners of his eyes.

"You must go out, Alberto," said the mayor of Rio. "They will not stop until you do."

Large TV consoles had been wheeled into the four corners of the spacious, high-ceilinged parlor. Only a dozen people had been invited to share this moment of triumph with their famous countryman, but more than forty others had squeezed into the room. Many of the men were in evening clothes; the women wore their finest frocks and jewels. Later Brumado and the select dozen would be whisked by helicopter to the airport and then on to Brasilia, to be received by the president of the republic.

Outside, the people of Rio thundered, "Bru-ma-do! Bru-ma-do!"

Alberto Brumado was a small, slight man. Well into his sixties, his dark round face was framed by a neatly clipped grizzled beard and short gray hair that seemed always tousled, as if he had just been engaged in some strenuous action. It was a kindly face, smiling, looking slightly nonplussed at the sudden insistence of the crowd outside. He was more accustomed to the quiet calm of the university classroom or the hushed intensity of the offices of the great and powerful.