Helene was in her apartment in Building 29 for the last time, looking around to check that everything of hers was packed away.  It was a bit like leaving a hotel, albeit one very, very far away from home.  Her possessions on Mars were very few, and they all fit into a large bag.  Including the newest and most important thing.

She closed her eyes, and breathed in deeply, a long slow inhale and exhale to calm herself and focus her thoughts.  She had been preparing for this point for weeks.  Well, in some sense for a few years, in that she had privately determined, from the moment she applied for the position of Mission Commander of the return to Mars, that she would find a way to get the Orphans back to Earth.

But it had been less than two weeks, since she had decided that she was going to have to sedate them all to get that to happen.

The Colony had, from fairly early days, possessed a medprinter.  It was able to "print", from the atomic level, any pharmaceutical product for which it had the requisite elements.  There are only a dozen elements found in most pharmaceuticals; it was not rare elements that typically made them effective, but rare ways of putting those atoms together.  It was not at all fast, but it was a good fit for remote locations which had small populations.  It could not make much of anything, but it could make a small amount of anything, and given enough time, a moderate amount.

Most of the time it was at work, printing small quantities of a wide range of commonly needed pharmaceuticals, of a few different types.  Antibiotics.  Steroids.  Pain relievers.

Sedatives.

For well over a week now, she had been using the medprinter to manufacture a sedative, which could be administered by letting it sublimate in the air vent.  It was odorless and transparent, and potent enough to tranquilize adults but not dangerous to use on children.  It had been developed by the government for use in hostage situations, where it offered a way to safely neutralize the hostage-takers without harming the hostages.  It was perfect for this situation on Mars, thought Helene, wherein the hostages and the hostage-takers were in many cases the same people; they had been brainwashed to want to stay.  She had been retrieving it from the medprinter every night, keeping it in her refrigerator so that it would not sublimate before she needed it.  She had not even needed to bring any other crewmembers into her confidence until today.

Just as she had thought, the Colonists had not responded well to her order to evacuate the Colony.  Only poor Harper had been willing to go voluntarily.  The death of her partner Alexander had shattered her illusion that life on Mars was viable, and they had been able to lead her to the rover, and drive her to the ship, without any resistance.  The crewmembers had mostly understood that the microbial contamination, the death of Alexander, and the loss of the fish farm had rendered it painfully obvious that the Colony was untenable.  Only Joshua, Jacob, and Sarah had been unwilling to leave.  In the case of Jacob and Sarah, this was probably because of their daughter Olivia, the supposed leader of the colonists.  Helene had decided that their daughter was actually being controlled by Liam, but they had not come to the same conclusion, which Helene thought was unfortunate but not terribly surprising.  Joshua, well Joshua had always been a problem, and she was not terribly sorry to leave him behind, if she was being honest.

But really, once she had the colonists sedated and all in the ship, it would not be difficult to convince those three to come along.

Helene had gone over in her mind, numerous times, various scenarios for how to get them all together.  Perhaps make a polite request to hear her out, all together in one place, as she made one last attempt to convince them to leave?  What if they refused, and all hunkered down in their separate apartments and locked their doors?  Getting the sedatives into every room's air vent would be logistically challenging.  She needn't have worried; she had not fully appreciated how cultish and paranoid they had become.  They all naturally gathered together in Building 3, at one end, where they held their Circle ceremony.  Perhaps they were worried that they might be overpowered, one by one or in small groups, and wanted to band together to prevent this.

As her last act before leaving her room, she took the containers of the sedative out of the refrigerator freezer, where they had been kept cold so they would remain solid.  Within a few minutes, they would start to sublimate, turning directly from solid to vapor.  She put the glass containers into her bag, and removed all of their lids.  The clock was now ticking.  She walked briskly through the underground corridors, towards Building 3.  When she entered, walking up the slope from the underground tunnel, she immediately felt all eyes upon her.  They were not friendly, nor even neutral, but they did not look ready for violence (yet, anyway).  

She had thought they might need to use this space, so she had studied the airflow patterns.  Because the plants of Building 3 were partly responsible for converting CO2 to oxygen, the design was careful to control how the air flowed through it.  Each dome brought air in from the center floor, where it went upwards to the top of the dome, then spread outwards in all directions towards exit vents around the perimeter.  Thus, if you put something smelly in the center of any given dome, it would not be apparent to others in the dome for a few minutes, but it would eventually reach everyone around the entire outer edge.  Fortunately, it also meant there was relatively little air exchange between the domes, so she did not need enough sedative for the entirety of Building 3, just this one dome.

Helene walked towards the center of the dome, and stood there, looking slowly around at the ring of hostile faces.  Briefly, she imagined the sedative, colorless, odorless, oozing out of her bag and being pulled up towards the dome above her, then descending to the edges.  She had considered perhaps dropping her bag, and walking around the edge, talking to all of the people present.  She could probably make it seem natural.  But she didn't want to risk that somebody might decide to move her bag to a table, or worse yet put it under a table, where it would be at the edge of the room and all of the sedative would flow directly towards the exit vents and never get the chance to work.

This did mean that she was likely to be inhaling a larger dose than anyone else, since she was closest to the bag.  She would probably pass out slightly before the rest of the room.  Since this would probably just cause the colonists to move towards her, to see what had happened, it was not a major problem, as far as Helene was concerned.  By moving towards her after she passed out, they would also move closer to her bag, and inhale more of the sedative, quicker.  The important thing is that when the crewmembers she had taken into her confidence came to take them all away, the sedative would have insured that they wouldn't be able to resist for several hours.  

By the time they came to, they would be on the ship, and the ship would be in space, with no realistic prospect of returning to Mars.  The crewmembers outnumbered the colonists by almost 2 to 1, and were all adult, and most of the colonists would grumble but accept the inevitable.  Olivia and Liam might be a problem, perhaps one or two others, but Helene was prepared to manage the situation, however uncomfortable it might become.  The most important thing was just to get them on the ship and blast off, no matter what.  

Once she had set her sights on a goal, Helene was not the type to give up, until she had succeeded; her drive and determination were above all what had enabled her to get where she had gotten in life: the first commander of a spaceflight to Mars in a generation.  If it required passing out in a room full of people who hated her, and hoping that her plan worked well enough to rescue them as well as herself, she would do what was required.

"Helene, where is Harper?" asked Elijah, angrily.

"She is on the ship, of course," said Helene.  "Where we all should be."

There was an unhappy murmur that went through the room; Helene was careful to keep her expression neutral.  Elijah was not so careful.

"That's kidnapping!" he shouted angrily, his hands balled up into fists.

"No one kidnapped her," said Helene, calmly and evenly.  "She came of her own free will.  As should we all."

Olivia, Helene noticed, seemed particularly shattered by this.  She recalled that there was some sort of childhood bond between them, where Olivia had (as a teenager) been put in the unfortunate position of having to act as a parent for a very young Harper; the sort of unfair suffering inflicted on the Orphans that had made Helene furious when she read about it, and determined to get them to Earth.  Perhaps the fact that Harper was going, could be used to persuade Olivia?

No, thought Helene, not with Liam still controlling her.  But, what if there were a second reason to go?  She looked over at Dorothy, who was sitting next to her.  Helene almost decided to walk over to Dorothy to make her pitch more personally, but did not, for two reasons:

1) Liam was easily capable of violence, and he was sitting next to her
2) Helene was not truly intending to convince Dorothy to leave voluntarily, she was stalling so that the sedative had time to work; standing near the center of the dome (with the sublimating sedative in her bag) would work better for that purpose, given the way the airflow circulated

But, the best way to appear as if you are trying to convince someone of something, is to actually try to be convincing, and she gave it her best shot.

"Dorothy," she said, "I know Harper and you were good friends."  Dorothy's eyes widened at being made the center of attention of the entire room.

"Ophelia told me that you and Harper and she would talk about what it was like on Earth," said Helene.  She was talking slowly, trying to make it sound like she was being empathetic, but in fact mostly trying to take as much time as possible.  Dorothy looked slightly embarrassed, and Helene realized that these conversations were probably not ones she wanted her parents to know about.

"Well, you can see Earth, if you have the courage to say you want it," said Helene.

Liam stiffened his spine, and glared at Helene with narrowed eyes.

"I suppose you might be worried that your parents would force you to stay," said Helene, "but there are a lot more crewmembers than colonists here, and we will not allow anyone to be held here against their will.  All you have to do, is say what you want."

Dorothy, unknown to Helene, was not worried about her parents forcing her to stay; she knew them better than Helene did.  She was tempted by the idea of going with Harper and Ophelia, to see worlds she had never been to.

"No one is going to be forced to stay," said Olivia, her voice steady, "but I am staying.  This is our home, and we have done a lot to build it up, and we can do more.  I would rather live free on the frontier, here on Mars, than be safe and controlled back on Earth."

"We live free on Earth," said Helene quickly.

"Good for you," said Olivia, uninterested (as always) in arguing.  "I am not going."

Olivia turned to Dorothy, slowly, and grimaced, the hint of tears in her eyes.  After a few moments, Dorothy (and Helene, and everyone else present) realized that Olivia was waiting for Dorothy to make a decision.

For a moment, Dorothy thought that her mother did sometimes look a bit like Sarah.  She remembered what Sarah had said, about the first night after she left Mars, 18 years before.  She remembered the first time seeing her mother crying, asking if Sarah would leave again.  She thought about how much she would miss Harper, and what it would be like for her mother to miss both her and Harper.  She looked back to Helene.

"Sorry, no," she said.  "Tell Harper and Ophelia that I will miss them.  I am staying."

Helene felt a twinge of resentment, at being defeated in anything, even though she had known that it was a longshot and the only point was to stall for time.  Well, it probably made her performance look more convincing.

She turned then, to address everyone present, calling them by name, using everything she knew about them to try to convince them to leave.  She never got as close as she had with Dorothy, but she felt the minutes tick by, and for a time it gave her rising confidence.  They were not going to throw her out until she had her say; the sedative would have time to do its work.  Then, as more minutes ticked by, she began to wonder why she still felt no effects.

She came, at last, to the end, having spoken to everyone present who was old enough to answer for themselves.  She still felt nothing.  She paused, pondering what else to say, wondering how long it would take.  Then, she became aware of Noah's smirk.

He was, unlike the rest of them, relaxed, leaning back in his chair, watching her closely but with an expression of...disrespect?  amusement?

Victory.  Noah looked victorious, as if he had just scored checkmate in a game of chess, but his opponent had not realized it yet.  Then, he raised one hand to exchange a quiet "high five" with Lucas, whose own facial expression was as inscrutable as ever.  But, she realized, he did look relaxed as well, unconcerned by the conversation, as if he guessed that it was never intended to convince anyone of anything.  Lucas, the computer expert, who had reprogrammed the agrobots.

They knew.  Probably not the others, but Noah and Lucas, they knew.  They had anticipated her use of the medprinter, and they had reprogrammed it.  The "sedative" in her bag, was a placebo.  Or perhaps the first night or two the medprinter had produced the real thing, and they had discovered what she was doing, and reprogrammed the medprinter so that it produced something else when prompted to make the sedative she needed.  The sublimating solid that she had been stockpiling for over a week wasn't just odorless and colourless; it was powerless, another substance entirely.  Whatever the truth, the fact was, if she felt nothing by now, then it wasn't going to work, on her or on anyone else.

Helene stood, stony-faced, for a few long moments, and then without a word she walked out of the room, and told the crewmembers to drive the rover to the ship.  They would not be taking anyone else off of Mars today.