"If you were to look hard enough, Marte, you could almost see our little farm down there--"
The Ship drew nearer and nearer. The balanced terrarium pointed Home, rushing faster than the wind, faster than sound, faster--
The Captain sat at his desk. For the past hour he had been drawing strange designs, contorted in helical animation, on a pad of yellow paper. Occasionally, he paused to stare out of the Observation window, lost in thought.
Absently, he let the pencil drop to the deck; the sound it made spun away his reverie. He bent and retrieved the pencil.
The Captain chuckled. "I've been thinking about what Johnny said a while back."
"You see that star, out there, Skippy? The bright one, there on the left of the field? I've been watching her for years. Even thought up a name for her. Mary Anne. It almost seems that if I could say something, in just the right way, she could understand and answer me."
The Mate closed the book and placed it on the table. When the two of them were alone, they sometimes talked of things that only friends can talk of. He maintained an encouraging silence.
"I've been thinking, too," the Captain continued, "that when I get to Earth, I can still see Mary Anne. If I know where to look, she'll be there, just the same as always....
"There was old Grandfather John Turner (you remember how he used to cuss the filters?) Remember how he talked of going Home. 'I won't live to see it,' he would say. 'I won't be here then,' he would say. But when he talked about it, it didn't seem to matter....
"It was the dream that mattered. A dream of everything that's wonderful. It meant peace and beauty and rest. It meant something too wonderful ever to happen.... For him, it was just a dream.
"Now that we can practically touch it, and see it, and feel it, I find it a rather frightening thing. It makes me feel cold inside; it makes my mouth get dry; it makes my hair prickle.
"Maybe I've been afraid all along to admit that I wanted to go Home; afraid that somehow wanting something so much like a dream would keep me from ever getting it.
"But now that we're almost there, I've changed. Remember what Johnny said, 'How would you like to sit on a porch and tell the kids how you came back from the stars?'"