"Yes, it is." Her voice was a steel ice pick, without a trace of self-pity in it.
"But how did it happen? Why . . . ?"
She leaned her head back against the galley paneling, her eyes looking away, into the past. "I had a baby. He didn't want it. I had to give her up for adoption—or have it aborted. The kid should be five years old now. I don't know where she is." She straightened up, looked back at Kinsman. "But I learned that sex is for making babies or making careers. Not for fun."
Kinsman hung there in midair, feeling as if he had just taken a low blow. The only sound in the cabin was the faint hum of electrical machinery, the whisper of air fans.
Linda broke into bitter laughter. "I wish you could see your own face: Tarzan the Ape Man, trying to figure out a nuclear reactor."
"The only trouble with zero gee," he grumbled, "is that you can't hang yourself,"
Jill sensed something was wrong, it seemed to Kinsman. The moment she came out of the bunkroom she started sniffing around, giving quizzical looks. When Linda retired for her final rest period before re-entry, Jill asked him:
"How're you two getting along?"
"Okay."
"Really?"
"Really. We're going to open a disco in here. Wanna boogie?"
Her nose wrinkled. "You're hopeless."
For more than an hour they worked at their separate tasks. Kinsman was concentrating on recalibrating the radar mapper when Jill handed him a bulb of hot coffee.
He turned toward her. Even floating several inches off the floor, Jill was shorter than he.
"Thanks." Her round face was very serious. "Something's bothering you, Chet. What did she do to you?"
"Nothing."
"Really?"
"For Chrissake, don't start that again' Nothing, absolute- ly nothing happened. Maybe that's what's bothering me."
Shaking her head, "No, you're worried about something and it's not yourself."
"Don't be so damned dramatic, Jill."
