Corey shoved the books doggedly back into the slot from which his wife had taken them on the bookshelf, and set his back stubbornly against them, glaring at her. "Those are records," he said, fighting an urge to shout. "The society of Thackeray's time, the British school system of Disraeli's. Some day our children will want to know what the world was like before the disaster." "Why?" said his wife. "What they don't know won't hurt them. They'll never wonder about it if you don't prod them to. And why should they know about _Vanity Fair_ and _Coningsby_ anyhow? _You've_ survived this long without knowing!" "All right, all right!" snarled Corey, whirling to the shelf, and pulling books out by the handful. "Fill the space with Wheaties, or movie magazines! Or home permanents and lipstick! To hell with our children's minds!" "Corey, stop it!" hollered Lucille, trying to pick the books from the shelter floor as he hurled them there, then giving up and simply trying to pin his flailing arms. His elbow struck her in the chest, and she fell back with a startled grunt. Corey, his face white, started toward her with words of remorse on his lips, then tripped ingloriously upon the heaped volumes and sprawled on his face at her feet. Lucille sank into a chair as he rose groggily on hands and knees, and began to laugh. Corey, after a second, began to match her laughter with his own. Then he frowned and stopped. Her laughter was all wrong. He took her by the shoulders and shook her, but she kept on laughing while the tears ran down her contorted face. * * * * * "You should have _told_ me!" moaned Martin, on his knees beside the metal-and-nylon cot. Dorothea just groaned and tossed her head from side to side on the sweat-soaked pillow, fighting the restraining straps. "S--Surprise," she mumbled, her features white with agony. "I w-wanted it to be a surprise." "But--" her husband sobbed, beating his fists futilely against the steel bulkhead, "didn't you know the takeoff would be like that? Haven't I told you how many grown men had died of internal hemorrhages from the gravities they had to resist during takeoff? Didn't you suspect that you--!?" He stopped, and sagged, his head resting against the frame of her bunk, and just sobbed softly, uselessly, while his wife murmured, over and over, like a fragment of intolerably sad music, "My baby, my little baby, my poor baby...." * * * * * Pete sat in a thick, muddling fog, his fingers fumbling with paper and glue, sniffling softly in his misery. He didn't hear the light footsteps on the porch, nor the familiar voice, until his name was called for the third time. Then he started, guiltily, and began to try and hide what he held clumsily on his lap.