As with the approach to Anglada, Bill turned on the holographic wall showing the approaching planet. Having almost no atmosphere, it wouldn’t give the pretty light shows they saw on Anglada with its thick atmosphere.
The circle would be disconnected so that the the spaceplane could dock. The Titanic would be headed to the orbital shipyard for maintenance after everyone boarded the landing craft. A maintenance worker would fly the Titanic to the docks.
They were surprised that there was a little bit of a sunrise show. There must be a little more atmosphere, Bill thought.
The two hundred seat space plane that docked with the Titanic was sparsely populated with the remnant of the passengers, which was everyone except almost a dozen of whom had left in the Earthian ship and the two dozen who had stayed on Anglada.
The plane landed outside the Marineris dome. All were surprised at the new Marineris ocean that had been a giant pile of ice when they left. They had seen movies of Earth’s oceans, and the Marineris was nothing like it; almost flat, with no huge satellite to pull the water around like on Earth.
It taxied to the hanger that doubled as an airlock. When they entered the terminal, they were shocked and surprised to see a huge contingent of news reporters and cameramen with their holographic cameras, and the multicolored laser flashes from the older still holos were like a twentieth century hippie light show. A huge group of people were waiting for Will.
Bill snuck out through an employee-only door as the reporters tried to find the almost three hundred year old spaceship captain. He puttered around his workshop for seventeen years before another heart attack took him. There’s a statue of him outside the Marineris dome; the Ramos family had it erected.
Every bar in space clamored for the Titanic Band to play, at first offering free drinks, then cold hard cash, and then it became almost a bidding war. They decided to play a dif-ferent bar every week, with a set payment, but only on Mars; the pirates were still bad in the belt. All started giving music lessons. Some of their students went to asteroids and taught music to other asterites.
Live music had died a long time ago, but was now in rebirth.
Günter spent ten years in Mars’ orbiting prison before being awarded Martian citizenship. He died young; for a spacer, anyway, only seventy three. That was ancient for an Earthian.
Harold suffered another heart attack a year after his return to Mars, and died of a stroke a year after that.
Lawrence McMahan and Mrs. Harrington were married three years after returning, and spent the next fifteen years together, seeing the Titanic band whenever they played in their dome. They died within days of each other.
Duane and Shirley were together for twenty years before Shirley died, still very, very old for someone who had spent her first forty years on Earth. Duane died ten years later, some said of loneliness.
The psychological study Jerry wrote up explained that mental illnesses that the Sirius crew suffered were a result of the time warp, the agoraphobia, boredom, and loneliness. The only ones on the Titanic who showed any mental illnesses at all were Mary, who was ill to start with before the successful treatment, and Edward, who committed suicide on the way home on the Earthian ship. The fact that all had been warned about possible insanity oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, helped keep them sane.
Billy had showed up at the spaceport to meet his grandpa when the spaceplane had landed, along with his entire family; his wife and children, their spouses, and their children. Will’s friend Harry was with them, now a very old, very wrinkled man in a wheelchair.
Will and Bill looked more like brothers than grandfather and grandson. Will had left Mars with no family, and returned to a large one. He lived happily for another thirty years, surrounded by his large family.
Other stars now awaited for humans to visit, or even colonize. The madness had been vanquished.