From Mars to the Stars

Paul had to apply for Nontarian citizenship before the wedding ceremony could be solemnized. The only potentially tricky point was the lack of his birth certificate, but the interesting difference between Martian civil servants and Nontarian government workers, Paul noticed, was that whilst the former were always apparently looking for a rule to stop a person doing what they wanted to do, Nontarian government workers always seemed to want to work with a person to enable them to do what they wanted to do if at all possible.

The other four humans who came with Paul on the Garagin had decided to go on the next mission of the ship, and they were joined by someone from Targe's university department who was an expert in comparative cultural studies, a subject that, with the near homogeneous culture on Nontaria, was almost completely theoretical.

The wedding of Paul and Indrit took place in the Great Library of the university and several days later they watched as the pulsing, flickering blue light of the ion jets of the Gargarin took the ship out of orbit, and when it was at a safe distance from the planet, they saw the weird colored vibrations as the ship's Krasnov-Kirkham Drive cut in and the ship vanished as it continued on its journey to the stars.

As they held hands and looked up at the darkening evening sky, Indrit whispered, "I'm pregnant."

Paul held her in a loving embrace as his tears of joy met hers.

Over the next ten years they had a total of four children, two boys and two girls, the latter being twins who were probably the cutest children in all the galaxy. At least according to their grandparents.

Paul worked at the university, helping the new head of the comparative cultural studies section and he also worked as a talk show host on Nontarian television. Apparently, there was a cache in being an alien, especially one who had developed a fantastically deep knowledge of Nontarian colloquial language and who had married a local girl.

The other Earth people from the previous mission settled down with varying degrees of success and Doctor Tim did a course at the University medical department to familiarize himself with Nontarian medical procedures and to re-qualify as a Doctor.

25 years later and another four starships had arrived from Mars, but the program had been ended by the authorities on Mars when they became aware that the planet already had inhabitants living on it.

Eventually Deana Krasnov had succeeded in creating a method of communicating faster than light and there was a special documentary on the Picady Project and, of course, there was a large segment on the program devoted to Paul and Indrit and their children, who were dubbed 'the first interstellar family.'

Emily Hall watched the program with tears in her eyes. She had divorced Cooper and hadn't been in contact with either Cooper or Sandrina in many years. In fact she neither knew or cared if they were still together.

All she knew was that was a lonely, aging woman. And as pets weren't allowed on Mars, she wasn't even allowed to have a cat for company.