After that I just sweated it out. But I found I couldn’t spend much time on books or my thoughts, I’d keep listening for what Jeff was saying to Joseph. And sometimes when he’d pause for Joseph’s reply I’d catch myself waiting for the imaginary me to make one. So I took to staying in the same cabin as Jeff as much as I could. That seemed to make him uncomfortable after a while, though he pretended to glory in it. He’d ask me questions like, “Tell me about life, Joe. So I’ll know how to handle myself if we’re ever parted.” But the weariest things come to an end, even duty orbits around Shaula. And so the time came when we were servicing our last beacon—outside the planet Shaula-by, it was. Next step would be a fast interplanetary orbit for Base at Shaula-near. I was out working—on a safety line of course, but suit-jetting around more than I needed to, just for the pure joy of it, so that my suit tank was almost dry. I’d switched my suit radio off for a bit, because, working in space, Jeff had taken to just gabbling to me nervously all the time—maybe because he figured there couldn’t be room for Joseph with him in his suit. [Illustration: space walk] I finished up and paused for a last look at the ship. She was sweetly slim from her conical living quarters to the taper-tail of her ionic jet, but she had more junk on her than an amateur asteroid prospector hangs on his suit the first time out. Every duty orbit, fifty scientists come with permission from the Commandant to hang some automatic research gadget on the hull. The craziest one this time was a huge flattened band of gold-plated aluminum, little more than foil-thick, attached crosswise just in front of the tail and sticking out twenty feet on each side. I don’t know what it was there for—maybe to measure the effects of space on a Moebius strip—but it looked like a wedding ring that had been stepped on. So Jeff and I called it Trompled Love. But in spite of the junk, the ship looked mighty sweet against the saffron steppes and baby-blue seas of Shaula-by with Shaula herself, old Lambda Scorpii, flaming warm and wildly beyond, and with “United States” standing out big as life on the ship’s living quarters. United States of Shaula, of course. * * * * * I was almost dreaming out there, thinking how it hadn’t been such a terrible duty after all, when I saw the ship begin to slide past Shaula.