out to flip the communicator's switch. At the first word, however, she
stiffened rigidly--froze solid.

Smiling, he opened the door, walked in, and closed it behind him.
Nothing short of a shotgun blast could have taken Doris Bryant's
attention from that recorder then.

"That simply is not so," she told the instrument firmly, with both eyes
resolutely shut. "They made him stay on the _Perseus_. He won't be in
for at least three days. This is some cretin's idea of a joke."

"Not this time, Dolly honey. It's really me."

Her eyes popped open as she whirled. "SAM!" she shrieked, and hurled
herself at him with all the pent-up ardor and longing of two hundred
thirty-four meticulously counted, husbandless, loveless days.

After an unknown length of time Sam tipped her face up by the chin,
nodded at the stroller, and said, "How about introducing me to the
little stranger?"

"_What_ a mother I turned out to be! That was the first thing I was
going to rave about, the very first thing I saw you! Samuel Jay the
Fourth, seventy-six days old today." And so on.

Eventually, however, the proud young mother watched the slightly
apprehensive young father carry their first-born upstairs; where
together, they put him--still sound asleep--to bed in his crib. Then
again they were in each other's arms.

* * * * *

Some time later, she twisted around in the circle of his arm and tried
to dig her fingers into the muscles of his back. She then attacked his
biceps and, leaning backward, eyed him intently.

"You're you, I know, but you're different. No athlete or any laborer
could ever possibly get the muscles you have all over. To say nothing of
a space officer on duty. And I know it isn't any kind of a disease.
You've been acting all the time as though I were fragile, made out of
glass or something--as though you were afraid of breaking me in two.
So--what is it, sweetheart?"

"I've been trying to figure out an easy way of telling you, but there
isn't any. I am different. I'm a hundred times as strong as any man ever
was. Look." He upended a chair, took one heavy hardwood leg between
finger and thumb and made what looked like a gentle effort to bend it.
The leg broke with a pistol-sharp report and Doris leaped backward in
surprise. "So you're right. I _am_ afraid, not only of breaking you in
two, but killing you. And if I break any of your ribs or arms or legs
I'll never forgive myself. So if I let m