"Forget it. Here, let me help you to the door. Easy, now." He was outside, the duffle balanced on his lean shoulder, the misty drizzle chilling him at once, the wet sidewalk casting his reflection and alternately swallowing and elongating his shadow as he made his way down the street past the spaced lamplights. Sooner or later, he would see her. He had to see her and the child, who was now almost three years old. But what did you do, walk in the front door and say hello Mrs. (name of new husband), I'm the man you used to be married to? Perhaps, he thought, you wrote a letter instead, a dear-John in reverse. But that way you did not get to see the boy. Certainly, you saw none of your old friends. Tough luck, old fellow. Something about more fish in the sea. Pat your back and introduce you to two or three one-tracked-minded bachelor girls as the conquering hero from Io and other faraway places. And you did not even venture into the old neighborhood until you were ready for the quick sally, the first visit to Nancy and the boy (and the new husband?) and departure. Nancy loved her husband, the girl-reporter said. Nancy had loved him. Simple logic: Nancy loved husbands, present tense. Security. What he sought. Safe in a circumscribed world, in comfortable, middle-class conformity, free and clear of all intrusions except the mortgage and the payments on the new copter and scraped knees for junior. He wondered how many bars he had visited, starting with the spaceport administration building. There was a hazy recollection of copter-cabs and surface-cabs, of smiling, vapid faces and other smiling faces, not vapid, when the video-cast appeared on a television screen in one of the bars and there he was, squinting against the flash-camera glare, the rain seeping through the roof of umbrellas and rolling down his long, gaunt face and off the thin, long, drooping nose. And then someone recognized him or he recognized himself and drunkenly announced his identity, he wasn't sure which, and someone had bought drinks for everyone celebrating Allerton's return to blessed bachelorhood and they all had a fine old time except Allerton who had soon taken his leave and another cab and another bar. Now the streets were familiar. There was the long, low bulk of the pie-wedge supermarket, big and wide in front and tapering in the rear, with great sweep of thermo-glass window staring at him and reflecting him in the lamplight so he could stare at himself.