"Yes."

"Oh." She turned and went back inside.

I relaxed very slowly. Much too much talk again, and all about the much too obvious. We could just as well have wound up at each other's throats.

We still might.

I pulled off the outer layers of my gloves and turned up the heat in the skin-thin layer remaining.

The bar was still jammed when I got it back together, sixty-seven hours later.

"Well, disconnect the damn things and let's move out. We've wasted enough time already." Helene's voice rasped tinnily inside my helmet, barely audible over the gurgle of the air compressor on my back.

I already had the left brake actuator off when she spoke. For a fraction of a second I wanted to go up front and slap her fool head off, then I caught myself and disconnected the right actuator and climbed onto the 'dozer. From now on, one of us would have to ride it, braking with its own controls when necessary.

"Let's go," I said, and then, without thinking, I added: "And be sure you give me plenty of warning when you're going to put on the brakes or turn." I was getting as bad as she was.

She put the big tractor into gear and pulled out, unnecessarily roughly, it seemed to me.

Of course, it could have been the bar.

The next day we hit the rough country. Rough for Mars, that is. Just a lot of low, rolling hills, running at odd angles to each other, with an occasional small outcropping of rust-red, eroded rock to make things interesting. We'd known it was there; it was clearly visible through the thousand-incher on Goddard. An ex-mountain range, they'd told us; not enough of it left to give us any trouble.

They couldn't see the rocks, and they didn't know we wouldn't be traveling according to the book.

It was obvious to both of us that riding the brakes on the 'dozer was the rougher job, and called for the quickest reflexes, which I had. Also, Helene had a hair-fine control over her voice, which I didn't have. Long before we hit the hills, I knew exactly how much braking she wanted from the way she asked for it. We couldn't have coordinated better 

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