The Project Gutenberg EBook of Homesick, by Lyn Venable

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Title: Homesick

Author: Lyn Venable

Illustrator: Ed Emshwiller

Release Date: August 3, 2009 [EBook #29599]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

_Homesick_

By LYN VENABLE

Illustrated by EMSH

_What thrill is there in going out among the
stars if coming back means bitter loneliness?_

Frankston pushed listlessly at a red checker with his right forefinger.
He knew the move would cost him a man, but he lacked enough interest in
the game to plot out a safe move. His opponent, James, jumped the red
disk with a black king and removed it from the board. Gregory, across
the room, flicked rapidly through the pages of a magazine, too rapidly
to be reading anything, or even looking at the pictures. Ross lay
quietly on his bunk, staring out of the viewport.

The four were strangely alike in appearance, nearly the same age, the
age where gray hairs finally outnumber black, or baldness takes over.
The age when the expanding waistline has begun to sag tiredly, when
robust middle age begins the slow accelerating decline toward senility.

A strange group to find aboard a spaceship, but then _The Columbus_ was
a very strange ship. Bolted to its outer hull, just under the viewports,
were wooden boxes full of red geraniums, and ivy wound tenuous green
fronds over the gleaming hull that had withstood the bombardment of
pinpoint meteors and turned away the deadly power of naked cosmic rays.

Frankston glanced at his wristchrono. It was one minute to six.

"In about a minute," he thought, "Ross will say something about going
out to water his geraniums." The wristchrono ticked fifty-nine times.

"I think I'll go out and water my geraniums," said Ross.

* * * * *

No one glanced up. Then Gregory threw his magazine on the floor. Ross
got up and walked, limping slightly, to a wall locker. He pulled out the
heavy, ungainly spacesuit and the big metal bulb of a