“And _more_,” she retorted. “But now _you’ll_ never know--We better get back, I guess. I’m supposed to make like respectable for tonight.” She started laughing, and took a step away so helmet contact was broken. He saw the laughter continue, but the sound broke off in the middle. Inside the pressurized half-track, she opened the face-plate, still chuckling. “It gets tougher to get dressed every day,” she said. “I mean, work clothes are fine, but when I have to get _dressed_....” “Well, take plenty of time,” he said, soberly. “I don’t know what the honorable investigators would make of it if they knew, but it’s a sure bet they’d smell headlines in it.” “I’ll try to worry about it,” she said. “Phil, you know, it’s the _damnedest_ thing--I suppose I’m in a jam. Or something. I mean, when I think about it, it’s practically classic--the unwed mother bit, and my man is sick-sick-sick--and probably half stoned besides--and here I am taken in by the men in the Moon--maybe that’s what makes it seem like lovely nonsense instead of Something Awful?” “You’ve been pretty happy the last couple of weeks, kid?” “Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, I have, Phil. And I mean what I was saying--It seems like I _ought_ to be worried and troubled, but--I’m _not_.” She looked away, and back again. “Phil, I’m not even worried about Johnny. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I don’t mean I don’t _care_. _I do._ Just--it doesn’t _feel_ like anything’s wrong. We’re just apart for a while, that’s all. I don’t mean that’s what I _think_, Phil, just what I--Oh, _you_ understand! You know, Thad says....” “Does he?” Phil said meaningfully. “Phil! You don’t think I--? Oh _no_!” And he actually believed her. She seemed not _too_ startled, but just enough--not _too_ scornful, just the right amount. And her laughter was free. “Okay,” he said. “I retract. But quit saying it or I’m just as likely to start sulking.” He managed what he thought was a creditable smile. _Dollars Dome--7_ P.M. (_C.S.T._) The dining room on arrival days always wore a bloom of festivity. The only decorative extras available were the glowing white onion-lilies provided, one for each table, by the farm section each week (carefully cultivated in defiant evasion of the ubiquitous regulating in-quintuplicate official schedules of production and supplies). But the bright plastic table tops were somehow gayer, the lighting more luminous, even the clatter of dishes and cutlery in some way more cheerfully hungry, at Wednesday dinners. The big difference of course was not in the place but the people: and not just that they tended to dress a bit more than usual, laugh a bit oftener, talk a bit freer, but that they were _there_, all together.