I

Over the hubbub and chatter came the brief warning wail of a small siren. The noise died as the people in the vast waiting room stopped talking.

"Your attention, please!" boomed the loud-speaker."Passengers for Spaceflight Seventy-nine, departing for Castor Three and Pollux Four, will proceed to Gate Seven for ground transportation to the take-off block. Spaceflight Seventy-nine, waiting for passengers at Gateway Seven!"

There was a moment of silence, then a loud racket burst out as everybody started talking at once. There was only a small flow of people toward Gate Seven, almost negligible, because Flight Seventy-nine was essentially a cargo hop. In fact, this morning less than a half-dozen headed for the gateway.

Among these was a tall man, impressive in his blue-black uniform. A space commodore, no less. He carried the light bag of the woman who was beside him, proud and happy and eager-looking. But traces of some internal storm clouded the man's features, and as they approached Gateway Seven, the man's perturbation worked closer and closer to the surface until finally it broke through.

"You could still back out," he said.

"No, I couldn't," she said. Her own face clouded a bit.

"Yes, you could," he snapped.

She stopped ten or fifteen feet from Gateway Seven and turned to face him. She was pert and pretty in a traveling suit of gray; brand-new for this occasion. Her name was Alice Hemingway, but she would have swapped it in a minute to become Mrs. Theodore Wilson, even on a commodore's salary.

"Look, Ted," she said slowly."We've been back and forth over this argument for a couple of months now. Can't you forget it?"

"No, I can't," replied Ted Wilson."I don't like the idea of you taking to space."

"I do," she said simply."I want to see these places you are always telling me about. I want to see 'em before I'm sixty. It's no fun listening to your stories, then having you trot off for three or four months on another jaunt while I sit home alone and wonder where you are and what's doing."

"But we" He paused, thinking."Alice," he said suddenly,"will you marry me?"

A welling of tears came then, but Alice blinked them back."If you'd asked me that a month ago I would have said 'Yes,' with no stipulations, but right now I'll say 'Yes, as soon as I come back, if you still want me.' Understand?"

"Not quite."

"I want you to be dead certain that the reason you want to marry me is not to keep me from taking this spaceflight."

Ted looked down at her."I'd really like to know if you accepted this trip just to force me into asking you," he said slowly.

"You'll never know," she said with a bright smile.

He swore under his breath."I still don't like the idea of you trotting off to Castor Three with that old goat."

"Mr. Andrews? Old goat? Why Ted! You're jealous."

"I am."

"Good. Stay jealous. But don't be an imbecile. Mr. Andrews is merely my boss, not my lover. He has never so much as watched me walk, let alone made a pass at me. I couldn't think of him as anything but a boss."

"But up there"

Alice shook her head."Forget it, Ted. I'm still your girl, and I intend to stay that way. Even though it's smart for a girl to have a lover or two before she marries, I'm the old-fashioned on