 Which of the following best serves as a metaphor for Phil and Mary's relationship, by the end of the story?
If anything could go wrong, they wouldn't be sending me; you know that. But I don't think I ever really believed it was possible—not until this morning when you said tonight was the take-off. Its future as a town rested with the ship, and the town seemed to feel the uncertainty of its future, seemed ready to stop existing as a town and to give itself back to the desert, if such was its destiny. Phil turned the car off the highway onto the rutted dirt road that led across the sand to the field where the ship waited. He read Phil's pass, shined his flashlight in their faces, and then saluted.
 The new, government-built town
 Mary's cigarette burned down too far  The new, government-built town  The barbed wire fence  The broken zipper on Phil's space suit