The call went out in Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, even Latin. (“Who knows the last time they may have visited?” Frederica said when Snyder gave her an odd look.)

If the wait for a reply from Earth had been long, this one was infinitely worse. The delay stretched far, far past the fifteen-second speed-of-light round trip. “Even if they don’t speak any of our languages, shouldn’t they say something?” Melissa demanded of the air. It did not answer, nor did the aliens.

Then, one at a time, the strange ships began darting away sunward, toward Earth: “My God, the acceleration!” Snyder said. “Those are no rockets!” He looked suddenly sheepish. “I don’t suppose starships would have rockets, would they?”

The Ares III lay alone again in its part of space, pursuing its Hohmann orbit inexorably toward Mars. Buck Herzog wanted to cry.

As was their practice, the ships of the Roxolan fleet gathered above the pole of the new planet’s hemisphere with the most land. Because everyone would be coming to the same spot, the doctrine made visual rendezvous easy. Soon only four ships were unaccounted for. A scoutship hurried around to the other pole, found them, and brought them back.

“Always some water-lovers every trip,” Togram chuckled to the steerers as he brought them the news. He took every opportunity he could to go to their dome, not just for the sunlight but also because, unlike many soldiers, he was interested in planets for their own sake. With any head for figures, he might have tried to become a steerer himself.

He had a decent hand with quill and paper, so Ransisc and Olgren were willing to let him spell them at the spyglass and add to the sketchmaps they were making of the world below.

“Funny sort of planet,” he remarked. “I’ve never seen one with so many forest fires or volcanoes or whatever they are on the dark side.”