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front door.”
    “I’m an opportunity?”
    No one at any of the other places he’d applied had thought of him that way. They’d taken one look at him and dismissed him as useless.
    “You encourage the dreamers,” she said. “We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t encouraged my husband. I expect that the people on this mission will need encouragement if we’re to succeed.”
    All of that was more flattering than Nick had expected, but he wondered if he deserved it. Like Felicity, many of the people he’d be living with on the moon hadn’t been among his good kids.
    “Now it’s my turn,” she said. “I want to know why you applied for the program, and I don’t want one of the pat answers you gave on the psych evaluations.”
    He’d written what he’d thought were the expected responses to any question that had even skirted around the edge of “why.” Apparently his answers hadn’t been as clever as he’d thought.
    “I wasn’t ready to be put out to pasture yet,” he said. “Everywhere I went, no one else seemed inclined to give me a chance to prove I was still capable of anything beyond a quick game of checkers. What’s that catch phrase everyone’s so fond of? Think outside the box?” He shrugged. “Can’t get much more outside the box than going to the moon.”
    He could see the disappointment in her eyes. He deserved it. She’d been more truthful with him than he had a right to expect, and he’d given her only a partial truth in return.
    “This colony’s going to make it,” he said. “I don’t know that for sure, but I can feel it in my bones. The people you’ve put together, they’re exceptional at what they do. They say the technology’s sound, and I trust that it is. People are going to do what people everywhere do, and the colony’s going to grow.”
    Nick had seen the precursors of that. Some members of the team had already paired off. He wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. The mission’s payload included provisions for the children that would inevitably result.
    “You might want me along to encourage the dreamers,” Nick said, “but that’s not my only job.” He could feel the old twinkle in his eyes again, and saw the reflection of it in Felicity Parker’s slow smile. “I guess I never did like the idea of being downsized.”
     
    ***
     
    Nick enjoyed the moon more than he thought he would. Lower gravity meant less pressure on his bones, and he felt like a young man when he got out of bed in the morning. That alone more than made up for the cramped quarters and the rough years when no one was sure the colony would last.
    The colony had survived. More than that, it had grown as Nick knew it would. Over the years the colony had added a nursery and then a schoolroom. Felicity Parker tutored the colony’s children in math and science, and Nick handled what colleges would have called “the humanities.” They didn’t criticize the kids but instead encouraged both logical and creative thinking, and celebrated their students’ successes no matter how small.
    “We’re creating a society,” Felicity Parker said to him one night over cups of instant hot chocolate.
    Alcohol still hadn’t made its way into the colony’s food systems, but sheer demand had overcome the embargo on chocolate. Powdered hot chocolate wasn’t as good as the kind Nick’s wife used to make on top of the stove back on Earth, but after not having had any at all for years, the instant tasted like heaven.
    “Better than the one we left behind?” Nick asked.
    “I believe it is.” She gave him a long look. “Are you ready for tonight?”
    The colony had no trees to decorate, of course, and no chimneys to shimmy down, but those were minor details. Nick had adapted, just like he’d adapted to the recycled air and the need to wear an environment suit whenever he exited a building. What was important was the small satchel resting in the corner of his cramped room. The bag was stuffed to overflowing