 Twenty years of longing, of turning eyes toward the green Earth as it hung on the horizon like a beckoning light. And now it was done, and the first new ship, built of shining Martian chromaton, had lifted bravely toward home with three men locked in its metal belly. Would they return to an Earth made barren by cosmic dust, to a blackened radioactive hell? Or would they find intelligence still alive on the scourged planet?