ld tell you," she said.

"Tell me what, Martha?"

She looked up slowly, scrutinizing his face. "Ken's changed his mind,
Nora says. Ken doesn't like the academy. She says he wants to go to
medical school."

Old Donegal thought it over, nodded absently. "That's fine. Space-medics
get good pay." He watched her carefully.

She lowered her eyes, rubbed at his calluses again. She shook her head
slowly. "He doesn't want to go to space."

The clock clicked loudly in the closed room.

"I thought I ought to tell you, so you won't say anything to him about
it," she added.

Old Donegal looked grayer than before. After a long silence, he rolled
his head away and looked toward the limp curtains.

"Open the window, Martha," he said.

Her tongue clucked faintly as she started to protest, but she said
nothing. After frozen seconds, she sighed and went to open it. The
curtains billowed, and a babble of conversation blew in from the terrace
of the Keith mansion. With the sound came the occasional brassy discord
of a musician tuning his instrument. She clutched the window-sash as if
she wished to slam it closed again.

"Well! Music!" grunted Old Donegal. "That's good. This is some shebang.
Good whiskey and good music and you." He chuckled, but it choked off
into a fit of coughing.

"Donny, about Ken--"

"No matter, Martha," he said hastily. "Space-medic's pay is good."

"But, Donny--" She turned from the window, stared at him briefly, then
said, "Sure, Donny, sure," and came back to sit down by his bed.

He smiled at her affectionately. She was a man's woman, was
Martha--always had been, still was. He had married her the year he had
gone to space--a lissome, wistful, old-fashioned lass, with big violet
eyes and gentle hands and gentle thoughts--and she had never complained
about the long and lonely weeks between blast-off and glide-down, when
most spacers' wives listened to the psychiatrists and soap-operas and
soon developed the symptoms that were expected of them, either because
the symptoms were _chic_, or because they felt they should do something
to earn the pity that was extended to them. "It's not so bad," Martha
had assured him. "The house keeps me busy till Nora's home from school,
and then there's a flock of kids around till dinner. Nights are a little
empty, but if there's a moon, I can always go out on the porch and look
at it and know where you are. And Nora gets out the telescope you built
her, and we make a