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coming through with my drinks, and one of the preacher's flailing arms caught her tray.
    I was on my feet before I knew it.
    I knew that it was a bad idea for me to lose my temper, but everything the doctors had told me vanished from my mind. "Goddamn it," I yelled at the furious husband, "that was my drink you just spilled!"
    And when Alma put her hand on me and said, "Please, Barry," I snapped at her, too.
    "Get your damn hand off me! I'm sick of these religious nuts!"
    She looked strained but determined. "Remember your condition," she said, and then I caught a glimpse of Rannulf. He was looking very pleased.
    That brought me back to present reality.
    I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes, willing myself to be calm. When I opened them again the Security people were leading the Nation couple out of the bar. I wasn't really calm. I was still seething inside, but at least I had control of my temper once more.
    "Sorry," I said. "I guess I don't really want that drink. Alma, let's get out of here."
    And she came along. She hesitated. She looked doubtfully at Rannulf who was looking nobly self-sacrificial, and for a minute I thought it could have gone either way. But then she sighed and got up, and I was the one who took her home.
     
    Alma's rooms were three tubes and a drop away from the bar, and by the time we got there things were all right between us again. Pretty much all right, anyway. She'd chided me for my silly jealousy, and I'd apologized for it, and then we didn't talk about any subjects that involved Rannulf anymore.
    Because of our schedules Alma and I didn't have much time together just then. That was the only real, tangible problem in our relationship—not counting Rannulf, I mean. It was a matter of timing. Our work shifts clashed. Basically I was coded as being on the A shift, although subject to call anytime when I was needed, while Alma was on C—you understand, "days" and "nights" on the Moon were a matter of arbitrary convenience, because the Moon's real day was so long and, mostly, because we never saw the Sun rise or set anyway.
    So after we had gone to bed in Alma's rooms and finished what we had gone to bed for—as good and rewarding as though Rannulf had never been born—it was still early in my day and I was wide-awake. Alma wasn't. She had rolled comfortably away from me, her face down in the pillows so that only the barrette on the top of her head was visible, and I had my arms around her. I could feel her breathing getting more and more regular.
    I thought for a bit, as I often did at such times, of how nice it would be to stay there. Not just that particular time, but on a regular basis. Nice to keep her cocooned in my arms while we slept the night away in the warm and friendly, faintly fragrant bedclothes. (Only I wasn't at all sleepy.) Nice, too, in the longer-range prospect—by which I meant (but only in my thoughts, and never aloud to Alma) the kind of long-range planning that involved getting married, and spending all our nights sleeping together, and maybe even having a baby together—
    But then I began, as I usually did at that point, to think of all the reasons against.
    The short-range reason against staying on, on this particular occasion, was that, although Alma had eaten a sandwich, I hadn't. I was getting hungry.
    The longer-range reason was that I realized I ought to report to the clinic after that flash of red-hot adrenaline in the bar—and the reasons why that was so. Those theoretical babies could be quite a problem.
    So I slid as quietly as I could out of Alma's bed—she was too sound asleep to notice—and after I had showered and dressed I went back to kiss her good night. She woke up just enough to lift her face to mine for the kiss. But what she said before she sank back was, "G'night, Rannulf." And it wasn't the first time she'd done it, either.

4
     
     
    THERE is concern about the "craziness" you have sometimes exhibited. Perhaps you should give more information on