id.

"But the Keiths' guests are starting to come. There'll be such a
racket." She looked at him hopefully, the way she did when she prompted
his manners before company came.

Maybe it wasn't decent to listen in on a party when you were dying, he
thought. But that wasn't the reason. Donegal, your chamber-pressure's
dropping off. Your brains are in your butt-end, where a spacer's brains
belong, but your butt-end died last month. She wants the window closed
for her own sake, not yours.

"Leave it closed," he grunted. "But open it again before the moon-run
blasts off. I want to listen."

She smiled and nodded, glancing at the clock. "It'll be an hour and a
half yet. I'll watch the time."

"I hate that clock. I wish you'd throw it out. It's loud."

"It's your medicine-clock, Donny." She came back to sit down at his
bedside again. She sat in silence. The clock filled the room with its
clicking pulse.

"What time are they coming?" he asked.

"Nora and Ken? They'll be here soon. Don't fret."

"Why should I fret?" He chuckled. "That boy--he'll be a good spacer,
won't he, Martha?"

Martha said nothing, fanned at a fly that crawled across his pillow. The
fly buzzed up in an angry spiral and alighted on the ceiling. Donegal
watched it for a time. The fly had natural-born space-legs. I know your
tricks, he told it with a smile, and I learned to walk on the bottomside
of things before you were a maggot. You stand there with your magnasoles
hanging to the hull, and the rest of you's in free fall. You jerk a sole
loose, and your knee flies up to your belly, and reaction spins you
half-around and near throws your other hip out of joint if you don't jam
the foot down fast and jerk up the other. It's worse'n trying to run
through knee-deep mud with snow-shoes, and a man'll go nuts trying to
keep his arms and legs from taking off in odd directions. I know your
tricks, fly. But the fly was born with his magnasoles, and he trotted
across the ceiling like Donegal never could.

"That boy Ken--he ought to make a damn good space-engineer," wheezed the
old man.

Her silence was long, and he rolled his head toward her again. Her lips
tight, she stared down at the palm of his hand, unfolded his bony
fingers, felt the cracked calluses that still welted the shrunken skin,
calluses worn there by the linings of space gauntlets and the handles of
fuel valves, and the rungs of get-about ladders during free fall.

"I don't know if I shou