Several weeks later, the long-awaited arrival of the spaceship on Mars was imminent.  The Martians had successfully made their longest-ever trip in the rover, to the polar icecap, and brought back more water than they had ever had before, in anticipation of the soon-to-be-stocked fish farm.  They had gritted their teeth through an all-hands cleaning and maintenance session in the semiconductor fab, abiding by Lucas' obsessive-compulsive (but effective) organizational mania  (he had afterwards, at Raymond's request, started production of chips to allow for the production of new tablets as well as servers).  Liam had kept up with more plants than had ever grown before in Building 3 since the Evacuation, 20 years before, so that there would be enough food for the newcomers.  They were, they thought, ready.

Of course, they were not.  But they had tried as best they knew how.

The rover was large enough to seat several dozen people at once.  Rarely did they need to have that many people in it.  More often, it was used by only a few people at a time, when they were moving large equipment from one part of the Colony to another.  But this time, was different.  This time, Olivia and Emma were there in the rover, alone, because they needed the space to take people back with them from the spaceship landing site, to the Colony.

That Olivia would be one of the ones meeting them was assumed, because of her status as de facto leader.  Liam, the second oldest, was not especially good with conversation, and showed no enthusiasm for being part of the Reception.  Elijah was obviously not the person to send (nor did he wish to go), and Noah was a bit too sharp-tongued to send on a potentially delicate and certainly important diplomatic mission, as was Ava.  Charlotte and Oliver agreed to go on the second run, because even with only two Martians in the rover, it would still not hold everyone who was on the spaceship (along with a great deal of gear), so they needed to do two trips, possibly three.  Thus, it was Emma who went with Olivia on the first trip with the rover to meet the spaceship.

They sat, in the quiet dark, as close to the intended landing site as they dared drive the rover, and waited.  Olivia and Emma were each other's oldest friends, and they could scarcely remember a time before they knew each other.  Olivia was the more technically oriented, and leaned often on her friend's acute instincts in regards anything to do with other people, even among the other Martians that she had known for many years.  Sitting there, waiting to meet new people for the first time in her adult life, she was outwardly calm, poised, and prepared.

Emma was quite aware, to a degree that almost hurt, that Olivia was inwardly terrified.

"It's ok, remember, your parents will be there," Emma said, and immediately regretted it.  Someone who did not know Olivia very well, or who was not as perceptive as Emma, might not have seen any visible reaction by Olivia.  But Emma knew that her demeanor had gone from quietly nervous to frozen stiff, like a prey animal freezing to avoid being seen by a predator.  Olivia, she realized, was even more afraid of meeting her parents, than of meeting strangers for the first time in her adult life.

"Yeah, it'll be fine," was all that Olivia said.  A little too softly, thought Emma, and without looking at who she was talking to.  Emma, until that moment mostly concerned about the reaction of the Earthlings to the Martians, was suddenly just as concerned about the other way around.  Not that very many of them would be facing the same issue; Olivia was one of the very few who still had living parents, and the only one whose parents would be on this spaceship.  Emma tried to imagine what it would be like if her parents were still alive, and coming back, but she couldn't do it very well.  She would be jumping for joy, probably?  Maybe not.  She didn't like it when she didn't know what was going on in Olivia's head.  Emma had little skill at technical questions, like Olivia did with (for example) medical issues or repairs to the Colony infrastructure, but she did know more about how people thought, and felt, than Olivia (or almost anyone else on Mars).  It caused Emma some almost professional guilt, that the leader of the Colony, and her best friend to boot, was struggling with something and she had no clue of it until now.

"There it is," said Olivia softly.

They had, by that point, been watching the point of light that was the spaceship from Earth, for some time.  In some sense, for months, but even from this spot in the rover, for an hour at least.  But now, it had come close enough to be visible as more than a dot.  Emma had been imagining this for months; the rotation, the flare as the spaceship began to burn most of what fuel it had left to decelerate, the dust cloud as it neared the ground.  In the event, she actually saw almost none of it, and what little she did see, she did not remember later.  Her eyes were pointed in the direction of it, but her mind was elsewhere, focused solely on Olivia.  When the rover started up and Olivia began steering it towards the landing site, Emma was startled to realize that the spaceship had come safely to rest and she hadn't even noticed, she had been so distracted by her thoughts.  Or, really, by Olivia's thoughts.

The Earthlings were, as expected, very weak from spending months in near-zero gravity.  They were also, as expected, a bit battered from the landing, even though it had all gone according to plan.  Once the landing was finished and the dust cloud had (more or less) settled, or at least was as settled as they could reasonably wait for it to be, Olivia was once again her old self, efficient and energetic.  She steered the drover up to the rendezvous port perfectly, she ran through the previously agreed sequence of events.  They drove into the open rover bay, and people on both sides checked that the seal between the rover bay and Outside was good, and both confirmed it through their commlink, before they opened the doors which separated the rover bay from the rest of the ship.  Then, for the first time in their adult lives, Emma and Olivia saw someone (in person, rather than on a videoscreen) that they had never met before.

"Greetings from Earth; I'm Helene, the Earth commander."

"Hello Helene, I'm Olivia and this is Emma; welcome to Mars."

These words had, of course, been more or less scripted beforehand, and all of them had seen pictures and short video of the other, so these introductions were in some sense pointless.  However, even when (or especially when) it is a very important event but it is not clear what should be said, it is useful to have a predetermined thing to say, simply because that evades the choice between awkward silence and making an unfortunate gaffe during an historic event.  It was the first arrival of humans from Earth to the planet Mars in 18 years, and they knew that the newsmedia back on Earth would want to know what the initial meeting was like.

Emma was not surprised to see that Helene looked, in person, not quite as polished and beautiful as she did in her public videos; she had after all just spent months on a spaceship which was built for practicality, not publicity.  She was taller than either of them, her clear complexion a light brown, her dark hair pulled back neatly, her posture and manner projected polished confidence and trained competence.  She also smelled bad.

This was not, it should be added, a reflection of her personal hygiene.  Space travel, as has often been noted, is gross.  Clean water is in short supply, and cleaning yourself in near-zero gravity is an involved process, which cannot be done as often as one might otherwise prefer.  No one smells good at the end of a months-long journey.  Olivia, thankfully, had read about this beforehand, and warned Emma and the rest of the Colony of what to be ready for.  They managed, as best they could tell, not to show that they noticed anything amiss.

Helene was joined, soon, by two dozen other polite, tired, smelly Earthlings.  They packed into the rover, collapsing onto their seats thankfully.  They had been exercising daily to try to reduce the loss of muscle and bone mass which accompanies months in very low gravity, but it was still an adjustment to feel Mars' gravity, even though it was only about 1/3 of Earth's.  Emma spotted Olivia's parents, Sarah and Jacob; she had known them when a small child, and seen the pictures of them that had been sent to Olivia more recently.  Emma gave them both a hug, despite the smell, and stood aside to let them make their way through the crowded interior of the rover to Olivia, who was back in the driver's seat.

"Olivia," said Sarah, in a near whisper choked with emotion.  She held her hand out, close to Olivia's shoulder, but did not quite dare to make contact.

"Hi, mom, it's good to see you," said Olivia, with a smile.  A very nice, friendly smile, such as one might give to any random stranger you had just met.  "You too, dad."

"Hey kid, good to be back," said Jacob, standing just behind Sarah.

"Better take a seat, the rover may bump around a bit," continued Olivia, while pointing them towards two empty seats in the back.  "After making it all this way, it would be a shame if you got hurt in the last few kilometers."

Olivia turned back to the rover control dashboard.  Jacob turned immediately to go sit down, and Sarah followed after a long moment's pause; they buckled themselves in along with the rest.  Most of the others were quiet, except for one who they soon learned was named Joshua.  He had dark skin, dreadlocks, green eyes, and thin facial features, which were nearly always fixed in a wry grin.

"Hey Emma and Olivia, that smell you notice, it's the new cologne that's the height of fashion on Earth.  Don't worry, we brought enough for everyone.  After a few months, you're gonna love it."

Emma chuckled and smiled, a bit nervously (for fear that her laughter might offend some of the other Earthlings, since it was basically a joke about how bad the Earthlings smelled right now), but she was also alert enough to notice a few things:

1) None of the Earthlings seemed surprised at Joshua being the first one to make a joke; a few rolled their eyes as if to say, "of course he does"
2) Several of the other Earthlings looked nervously in Helene's direction
3) Jacob's chuckle was a bit more genuine, and less nervous, than most of the others
4) Helene did not smile, at all, and her eyes narrowed just slightly

Olivia drove the rover expertly back from the landing site to the Colony.  The inside was quiet almost the entire way.  Emma tried to break the ice.

"We're going to Building 29," she said, loud enough so those in the back of the rover could hear her easily, "it's been newly restored and ready for you."

"Sounds great, thank-you," said Helene.  They all knew what the plans were, of course, but Emma needed to say something.

"Is my apartment in Building 23 still available?" asked Sarah.  Helene's eyes narrowed again.

"We all need to go to 29 for now," said Helene quickly.  Emma looked over at Olivia, who did not appear to take any notice of the conversation, even though the topic of discussion was the small apartment in which she had spent the first fourteen (Earth) years of her life.

"I think it's still available," said Emma, "but it may not be inhabitable right now.  Some of the unused apartments have been used as a source of spare parts when things break in the others.  I can check on it soon."

When they arrived at Building 29 and docked, Olivia ran through the checklist expertly before unsealing the rover, and prepared to step off first.  Helene put a hand on her arm, and stepped in her way to block her.

"We need to maintain isolation until everyone's had a chance to get vaccinated," said Helene.

"We all completed the vaccination course two weeks ago," said Olivia.

"But we haven't gotten vaccinated against anything you might have," said Helene.

"Our population is too small to sustain any harmful microbes," said Olivia, "they would burn through all of us and die off.  In any case, we've done real-time monitoring of the sewage stream in Building 2 for years, and we don't have anything on Mars that's not already in common circulation on Earth."

"I need to review that data first," said Helene.  "No offense to your people, whoever it was that did the viral population analysis was doing their best I'm sure, but I have years of training on it."

"Olivia did that analysis," said Emma, "and she's the medical expert here."

"I'm sure it's fine but you're not an epidemiologist," said Helene, by this time visibly annoyed.  "I must insist."

"I had it reviewed by an epidemiologist on Earth," said Olivia, "and I live in this building.  So I have to go in, and my family is already here."

And with that, she stepped underneath Helene's still-outstretched arm, and entered Building 29.

The other Earthlings all followed, leaving Emma to drive the rover back to Building 3, where Oliver and Charlotte were waiting to take over for the next round.  It would take several trips to bring all of the Earthlings and their gear out of the spaceship.  Emma briefly described her trip.

"What is the point of a quarantine when you and Olivia had already been in the rover with them for several minutes?" asked Charlotte.

"Well, it could in theory be something that isn't easy to catch, but you will if you stay together long enough," said Oliver.  "But it still seems like a stretch.  Anyway, they really should have worked that out before arrival.  Whatever.  I think maybe it's pretty stressful putting up with each other in close quarters for several months, they probably all just need a few days to clean up and get used to gravity again, and then they will be in a better mood."

With that, Oliver and Charlotte were off in the rover to bring back the next batch, leaving Eugene with her and Elijah for the evening.  Emma felt tired, and her legs were cramping, and her back hurt.  Eugene was a good kid, but he and Elijah either got along great, roughhousing good-naturedly in a way that neither of their own sons enjoyed, or else they got into an argument (which she had a suspicion they also secretly enjoyed, since neither of them lived with anyone thick-skinned enough to argue with that vehemently).  She had warned them both to stay on their best behavior tonight.  She hoped it would be a quiet night in their apartment in Building 23.

She wondered what it was going to be like in Olivia's home tonight.