It was a long week. Saxon slept little. He paced the cabin. He looked at the stars and thought about a blue-eyed waif with tears in her voice, begging him to stay.
After a week the lifeboat came down at the edge of a grassy plain. Saxon took a sample of the contaminated atmosphere to determine propagation rate.
The atmosphere was pure.
Some freak of expansion. One uncontaminated spot in a hemisphere of death.
He selected another location. Then another. That evening he close the coordinates of his original landing site and tested the air again.
Finally he went outside the airlock. He breathed deeply, and the air was fresh and sweet, it smelled of forest and cool streams and evening dew. In the blue dusk birds twittered. A small marsupial very much like a squirrel scampered to the safety of a tree and scolded him.
Saxon began walking.
At the edge of the forest he saw the familiar plowed field. The farmhouse was a friendly beacon in the twilight.
"Hello," Veena said. She stood at the edge of the forest. She was smiling. "Welcome home, rover."
For the next few days Saxon was the perfect guest. He argued philosophical abstractions with the family by firelight; by day he hiked in the woods with Veena and listened to Mentor give her lessons. He asked questions.