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half-expected. He felt old. He was old. Too old, perhaps. If they had not changed the regulations he would have been on the shelf ten years ago at his age....
    Still, here he was. And he’d tell her himself. Tell this poor girl - just as he had told the other one, long ago. So piteously little he could tell her. ... Lost on a secret mission ... So cruelly blank...
    She would know later on, of course - when Security considered it safe. Oh, yes, she would know. He’d see to that. He would throw all his weight there. ... For sheer cold courage ... Nothing less than a V.C. ... Nothing less...
    He looked back at the security report for the previous day.
    ‘Subject dispatched radio to Troon. Message: “Happy birthday from Laura and Michael.” (N.B. Presumed code reference to subject’s birth of child, male, on previous evening. Supporting this: (a) Troon’s birthday 8 May; (b) his radio reply: ‘‘I love you both.”)’
    The Air Marshal sighed, and shook his head.
    ‘But at least she has the boy,’ he murmured. ‘And she knows he knew about the boy.... I’m glad he did.... The old Ticker never even knew there was to be a child...
    ‘I hope they meet up there. ... Ought to get on well together....
     

Two: THE MOON - A.D. 2044
     
    There was a double knock on the alloy door. The Station-Commander, standing with his back to the room, looking out of the window, appeared for the moment not to hear it. Then he turned, just as the knock was repeated.
    ‘Come in,’ he said, in a flat unwelcoming tone.
    The woman who entered was tall, well-built, and aged about thirty. Her good looks were a trifle austere, but softened slightly by the curls of her short, light-brown hair. Her most striking feature was her soft, blue-grey eyes; they were beautiful, and intelligent too.
    ‘Good morning, Commander,’ she said, in a brisk, formal voice.
    He waited until the door had latched, then:
    ‘You’ll probably be ostracized,’ he told her.
    She shook her head slightly. ‘My official duty,’ she said. ‘Doctors are different. Privileged in some ways, on account of being not quite human in others.’
    He watched her come further into the room, wondering, as he had before, whether she had originally joined the service because its silky uniform matched her eyes, for she could certainly have advanced more quickly elsewhere. Anyway the uniform certainly suited her elegant slenderness.
    ‘Am I not invited to sit?’ she inquired.
    ‘By all means you are, if you care to. I thought you might prefer not,’ he told her.
    She approached a chair with the half-floating step that had become second nature, and let herself sink gently on to it. Without removing her gaze from his face, she pulled out a cigarette-case.
    ‘Sorry,’ he said, and held the box from the desk towards her. She took one, let him light it for her, and blew the smoke out in a leisurely way.
    ‘Well, what is it?’ he asked, with a touch of irritation. Still looking at him steadily, she said:
    ‘You know well enough what it is, Michael. It is that this will not do .’
    He frowned.
    ‘Ellen, I’ll be glad if you’ll keep out of it. If there is one person on this station who is not directly involved, it is you.’
    ‘Nonsense, Michael. There is not one person. But it is just because I am the least involved that I have come to talk to you. Somebody has to talk to you. You can’t afford just to let the pressure go on rising while you stay in here, like Achilles sulking in his tent.’
    ‘A poor simile, Ellen. I have not quarrelled with my leader. It is the rest who have quarrelled with theirs - with me.’
    ‘That’s not the way they see it, Michael.’
    He turned, and walked over to the window again. Standing there, with his face pale in the bright earth light, he said: ‘I know what they are thinking. They’ve shown it plainly enough. There’s a pane of ice between us. The Station-Commander is now a pariah.
    ‘All the old scores have come up to the surface.