I float to the end of the tether in this last day of an old Earth year. Mars sits out in front of me, a giant orange harvest moon silhouetting the southern edge of the station.

The sun is directly behind, and I feel the warmth soaking slowly into my suit from the back. Sunlight streams over my shoulders, between my legs, everywhere, and bathes the tinker toy modules of the station, sparkling from metal surfaces. I pull a filter down over the suit visor.

The three main Tharsis volcanoes stare up at me from seventeen thousand kilometers directly below. Pavonis Mons is in the middle, smack on the equator, straddled by Arsia Mons seven hundred kilometers southwest and Ascraeus Mons seven hundred kilometers northeast. They look like three dark blisters -- blood blisters -- in a perfect straight line, perfectly spaced, diagonally across the Martian equator.

The vent cloud trailing out from Arsia towards Mariner Valley is large and brilliant white, almost bright enough to make me pull down another filter. I've never seen it so prominent. And damned if there's not a small one coming off Pavonis, too. We'll have to tell the areologists; if this is a new vent, they'll wet their pants.

I'm carefree and happy, with an enormous orange harvest moon in the sky and stars all around. It's almost like being back on Earth, going out in your backyard on a winter night in the dark to survey your property and take a leak under the stars.

It's not a complex thing; it's a simple pleasure. Steam the ground out in front of you, mark the boundary of your territory and look out wondering at the wonder of all those stars, all those people up there, many of whom must be doing the alien equivalent of pissing in their own backyards and looking up and out toward you. Where are they? Where are those alien people?

Ah! There's the Scorpion, curling it's tail thirty or forty degrees away from the planet. And there's the Tea-pot, steaming the Milky Way from it's spout, although with a filter down I more imagine the steam than see it.

Must be somebody out there. Where? Never hear from you, give us a call.

I'm the master of all I survey; it all belongs to me. The stars are bright and crisp all around, and I let my attitude wander -- pitch, roll, yaw -- so that those bright little points -- sky islands -- drift slowly across the screen of consciousness. There's Fomalhaut, and there's Jupiter and Saturn, about thirty degrees apart on the ecliptic, and that's probably -- is that Canopus down there? Maybe, so look due north toward the sun and -- yeah, there's Sirius, the Dog star, following along behind Orion, and I can just make out Orion's belt in the glare, the sun is only thirty degrees away (pull down another filter), so that's Betelgeuse up there, and Rigel down below.

It's a cold, crisp winter night, smoke curling up from the chimneys, and I look up at the stars peacefully, wondering what's out there. I'm totally alone but don't care because I want it that way. Because there's nothing I could think of to say to another human being anyway.

"Max?" My wife calls my name over the radio. At exactly that moment something like sand or gravel clatters against the back of my suit and there's a sharp twinge in the back of my left leg between the knee and rear end, and the normal hiss of air in the suit doubles in volume. Something big shoots over my left shoulder and out toward infinity as I try to twist around to see what's going on behind me.

Andra is startled. "Damn! -- what's happening? Max, you better come inside, the main power's off and something hit us. We've got a leak. Max? Where the hell are you?"

"I'm here. Wait a minute. I've got a leak, too. What's going on?"

No time for fear; the suit pressure is going fast, can feel my ears popping. I haul in hard on the tether and zip toward the tripod joint. I roll left to look behind.

Damn! The north end of the station has blown open and I see vapor, or steam, or -- whatever it is, whistling out of big, gaping holes with shredded edges, and smaller holes farther south along the module. Looks like a calliope with that vapor coming out in all directions. It's the end-cone of the north wing where the powercans are. Were. It must have blown up, it looks like the prime powercan has exploded. In the entire history of these things, an Aronson fusion generator has never blown up. But this one has ripped off with one hell of a lot of violence, and it's put holes in everything nearby, including me.

I'm so engrossed that I forget where I'm going and bang hard into the tripod and start tumbling like crazy. I grab out for tether, fistfuls of it, anything I can get my hands on until I yank onto a section only a meter or so from the attachment and pull in to the tripod and grab hold.

"We've got a leak!" Andra shouts frantically. "Damn, more than one leak. Charles! Laura! Where are you? Get the hell in here."

I hit the joining node that I'd exited just twenty minutes ago and start to rotate the hatch when I see a ten centimeter jagged hole in the wall beside the port. Jesus, a fragment even came through here. Can't go in this way; it'll never pressurize.

"Charles! Laura! Max!", Andra screams. "Oh thank God!" she cries with relief before I answer.

"I'm at the joining node, got a hole in it, can't come in here. Going over to the east node," I say. "Where're the other two?"

"They're here. We're all here, darling, all three of us. Where are you? " she shouts. "Max! Hurry! Are you all right? Should I come out to help?"

"Okay, I think. Coming in the node. No." My mind isn't working, I'm forgetting about the hole beside the port. The suit pressure is way down; the feed can't keep up with the leak.

"Going over the tripod to the east node. Come in that way," I say, trying to stay focused.

"Not that one, Max." Laura is talking. "Don't use that node." Her words come down a long corridor. "The east wing is leaking too fast, you can't come in there, we have to close it off, it's going to be hard vacuum. Come down to the south node, Max. The south node. Okay?"

"South. Node. Roger, roger, roger." My vision is starting to narrow down. I'm hot, dizzy, and there are spots in my eyes. Everything is in slow motion, moving away from me.

"Where are you? What're you doing?"

I'm dimly aware that I've already crossed the tripod to the east node. Don't remember getting there.

"East. I'm there. Laura." Slurring. Slipping.

"No, no!" Laura and Andra shout together. "SOUTH node. SOUTH!"

"Hold on, Max," Andra says, "I'm pressuring up, coming out."

My hand is at the node pressure dump, but it's taken a million years to get it there in this slow motion movie, and I'm slipping. Ears roaring, face hot, vision tunneling down to the point that I can just distinguish my hand fumbling at the actuator. Left hand I believe, if I'm not mistaken. Or is it right? And the tunnel closes down the rest of the way.

He comes out of the sun, the man in the sandy blonde hair, blinding white, too hot to see, dimming, dwindling gradually down to flesh-tone colors, nice tan suit, tossing a lock of hair off his forehead.

He smiles. "Hello MacKinzie Joseph Hunter."

"Do I know you?" I ask.

"We've met before, but you don't remember. You can call me Allen."

"Am I dead?"

He frowns.

"What do you want?"

"I already have most of what I need. Lets just review the last few months if you please."

"Am I dead?"

He puts a finger to pursed lips, shushing.