“Mormons? Our kids?”
“Yes.”
Don felt confused, almost scared. “I’ve got to talk with them. They’re too young to—”
But Judy was shaking her gray head. “They won’t be here to talk with. And neither will I.”
He felt it like a body blow as he hung there weightlessly, defenselessly, staring into the screen.
“I’m getting a divorce, Don,” Judy said. “You’re not a husband to me. Not two months out of every twelve. That’s no marriage.”
“But I asked you to come up here with me!”
“I’ve been living with Jack Hardesty the past six months,” she said, almost tonelessly, it was so matter-of-fact. “He’s asked me to marry him. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“Jack Hardesty? Jack?”
“You can live up there and float around forever,” Judy said. “I’m going to get what happiness I can while I’m still young enough to enjoy it.”
“Judy, you don’t understand—” But he was talking to a blank screen.
Don had to return to Earth for the official opening ceremonies of Space Station Alpha. It was a tremendous international media event, with special ceremonies in Washington, Cape Canaveral, Houston and the new life-extension medical center in Senator Petty’s home state.
It was at the medical center ceremonies that Petty pulled Don aside and walked him briskly, urgently, into an immaculate, new, unused men’s room.
Leaning on the rim of a sparkling stainless steel sink, Petty gave Don a nervous little half-smile.
“Well, you got what you wanted,” the Senator said. “How do you feel about it?”
Don shrugged. “Kind of numb, I guess. After all these years, it’s hard to realize that the job is done.”
“Cost a whale of a lot of the taxpayers’ money,” Petty said.
Gesturing at the lavish toilet facility, Don riposted, “You didn’t pinch any pennies here, I notice.”
Petty laughed, almost like a little boy caught doing something naughty. “Home-state contractors. You know how it is.”
“Sure.”
“I guess you’ll want to start living here on the ground full-time again,” Petty said.
Don glared at him. “Oh? Am I allowed to? Is our deal completed?”
With an apologetic spread of his hands, Senator Petty said, “Look, I admit that it was a spiteful thing for me to do. . .”
“It wrecked my marriage. My kids are total strangers to me now. I don’t even have any friends down here anymore.”
“I’m. . . sorry.”
“Stuff it.”
“Listen. . .” The Senator licked his thin lips. “I. . . I’ve been thinking. . . maybe I won’t run for re-election next time around. Maybe. . . maybe I’ll come up and see what it’s like living up there for a while.”
Don stared at him for a long, hard moment. And saw that there was a single light-brown spot about the size of a dime on the back of one of the Senator’s hands.
“You want to live in the space station?”
Petty tried to make a nonchalant shrug. “I’ve. . . been thinking about it.”
“Afraid of old age?” Don asked coldly. “Or is it something more specific?”
Petty’s face went gray. “Heart,” he said. “The doctors tell me I’ll be in real trouble in another few years. Thanks to the technology you guys have developed, they can spot it coming that far in advance now.”
Don wanted to laugh. Instead, he said, “If that’s the case, you’d better spend your last year or two in the Senate pushing through enough funding to enlarge the living quarters in the space station.”
Petty nodded. Grimly.
“And you should introduce a resolution,” Don added, “to give the station an official name: the Senator Robert E. Buford Space Center.”
“Now that’s too much!”
Don grinned at him. “Tell it to your doctors.”
There was no reason for him to stay on Earth. Too many memories. Too few friends. He felt better in orbit. Even in the living sections of the Buford Space Center, where the spin-induced gee forces were close to Earth-normal gravity, Don felt more alive and happier. His friends were there, and so was his work.
