was left of the tractor, but that would have to not matter. We were going to have to drive 'round the clock or not get there in time. A bulldozer is not a fast vehicle under any circumstances.

Logically, I couldn't see that we had much chance of covering eleven hundred miles in that rig, without having to make at least one stop quick enough to collapse the towbar and land the tractor on top of the 'dozer.

Emotionally, I couldn't believe a word of it. I knew we were going to get there.

We did.

Forty-eight days after the crash, I drove through the blackened edge of the northernmost "marker area," and parked just inside its southern tip.

When I came up through the airlock, Helene was looking out what had been the forward port of the tractor, which now faced the area we would have to make into a landing strip.

When I had the inner layer of my suit half off, she spoke for the first time since we'd been married: "We made it, Marsh."

I joined her and looked out into the dusk. It was going to be rough, but we could do it. "Not quite," I said, "we've still got that strip to chew out."

She was silent a moment, then said, tightening her arm around me: "I know. I said we made it, Marsh." 

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