The stiffness went out of Hastings. He sank back breathing hard, as if he had been running too fast. "Mary, you don't know how good that hears. You just don't know!" "Oh my darling!" She held his head in her arms, her mouth close to his ear. "Has it been this, all these months?" The man nodded, laughing a little. "I just couldn't take the thought that maybe--" "Hush, hush! Don't even say it any more. Drink the wine and remember what I said ... 'To its warm glow, like our home together.'" His hand reached out, and trembling slightly, the fingers grasped, and fumbled, and clutched at air. The glass shattered prettily, spilling its golden life on the unalterable stone throat of the hearth. And they stood there, hands untouching. Watching the glistening fragments trap the last warm glow of the fire. * * * * * "Enough, enough," a voice said. "You will rechannel your thoughts, Captain Hastings. There is another day in time." The screen misted, and the veils swirled. "March eleventh ... on a ship ... a glazed splinter in blackness...." The curtains quivered. "Men gather tight against the void ... a clarinet wails ... there is the smell of sweat...." Kitson and Holmes were doing a dance. They had their breechskins rolled over their knees, and four grapefruit tied to their fronts. "Take it off ... take it off ... _take it off_!" The men rode a ground swell of tinny music. Rhythm stamped out in the pattern of magnetic boots fought with the sucking sound of beer cans. The air curled with smoke. Above their heads a hatch opened, and the Captain's legs appeared, descending ladderwise. Abruptly, the melee subsided into leftover clarinet tones. "Mr. Kitson." Kitson brought himself to attention, his grapefruit swinging. "Sir?" "I've been informed there was news from home." The men looked at one another. "Only the broadcast from the Sector, sir. Nothing unusual." "You took it down on the tapes?" "Yes, sir." "I should like to hear it." From one corner a reluctant shuffling replaced the lately dead downbeats. The reproducer scratched badly. "... at a banquet given for members of the committee. Prominent among the guests was Mrs. Mary A. Hastings, wife of Captain John Hastings who is making history in his FTL flight to Alpha Centauri. Captain Hastings will test his invention, the electron-lightscope, from our neighboring sun. It is reliably reported that the lightscope will revolutionize astral observation, in that it will replace the telescope, and will bring distant galaxies to within a few hundred feet of the earth. "Mrs. Hastings, smartly gowned, was seated next to Co-ordinator Charles Lathrop, who had--" Someone jostled into the machine. The groove was lost. Hastings spoke slowly. "I'd like to hear the rest of it." Kitson was carefully unrolling his breechskins. "I'd like to hear the rest of it, I said." "Yes, sir," someone murmured.