game of it. 'Seeing if Daddy's still at the office,'
she calls it."

* * * * *

"Those were the days," he muttered.

"What, Donny?"

"Do you remember that Steve Farran song?"

She paused, frowning thoughtfully. There were a lot of Steve Farran
songs, but after a moment she picked the right one, and sang it
softly ...

"O moon whereo'er the clouds fly,
Beyond the willow tree,
There is a ramblin' space guy
I wish you'd save for me.

"_Mare Tranquillitatis_,
O dark and tranquil sea,
Until he drops from heaven,
Rest him there with thee ..."

Her voice cracked, and she laughed. Old Donegal chuckled weakly.

"Fried mush," he said. "That one made the cats wilt their ears and wail
at the moon.

"I feel real crazy," he added. "Hand me the king kong, fluff-muff."

"Keep cool, Daddy-O, you've had enough." Martha reddened and patted his
arm, looking pleased. Neither of them had talked that way, even in the
old days, but the out-dated slang brought back memories--school parties,
dances at the Rocketport Club, the early years of the war when Donegal
had jockeyed an R-43 fighter in the close-space assaults against the
Soviet satellite project. The memories were good.

A brassy blare of modern "slide" arose suddenly from the Keith terrace
as the small orchestra launched into its first number. Martha caught an
angry breath and started toward the window.

"Leave it," he said. "It's a party. Whiskey, Martha. Please--just a
small one."

She gave him a hurtful glance.

"Whiskey. Then you can call the priest."

"Donny, it's not right. You know it's not right--to bargain for such as
that."

"All right. Whiskey. Forget the priest."

She poured it for him, and helped him get it down, and then went out to
make the phone-call. Old Donegal lay shuddering over the whiskey taste
and savoring the burn in his throat. Jesus, but it was good.

You old bastard, he thought, you got no right to enjoy life when
nine-tenths of you is dead already, and the rest is foggy as a thermal
dust-rise on the lunar maria at hell-dawn. But it wasn't a bad way to
die. It ate your consciousness away from the feet up; it gnawed away the
Present, but it let you keep the Past, until everything faded and
blended. Maybe that's what Eternity was, he thought--one man's
subjective Past, all wrapped up and packaged for shipment, a single
space-time entity, a one-man microcosm of memories,