"What are you going to do, Mitch? Just stay here for good?"
"What else--if I can? This is better than anything I remember. Peaceful, too. If they study me, I study them--not like a real scientist--but by just having them close around. I even got to know some of their buzzing talk. Maybe I'll have to be their ambassador to human folks, sometime. They _are_ from the planets of the stars, Frank. Sirius, I think. Tough little spores can be ejected from one atmosphere, and drift in space for millions of years... They arrived after the first Martians were extinct. Now that you're here, Frank, I wish you'd stay. But that's no good. Somebody lost always makes people poke around."
Nelsen might have argued a few points. But for one thing, he felt too tired. "I'll buy it all, your way, Mitch," he said. "I hope Nance and I can get out of here in a couple more days. Maybe I shouldn't have run out on the Belt. Can't run--thoughts follow you. But now--dammit--I want to go home!"
"That's regular, Frank. 'Cause you've got Syrtis. Chronic, now--intermittent. But it'll fade. Same with your girl. Meanwhile, they won't let you go Earthside, but you'll be okay. I'll fly you out, close enough to the Station to get back, any morning before daylight, that you pick... Only, you won't tell, will you, Frank?"
"No--I promise--if you think secrecy makes any difference. Otherwise--thanks for everything... By the way--do you ever listen in on outside news?"
"Enough. Still quiet... And a fella named Miguel Ramos--with nerve-controlled clamps for hands--got a new, special bubb and took off for Pluto."
"No! Damn fool... Almost as loony as you are, Mitch."
"Less... Wake up, Nance. Dinner... Chicken--raised right here..."
That same afternoon, Frank Nelsen and Nance Codiss sat in the garden. "If I blur, just hold me tight, Frankie," she said. "Everything is still too strange to quite get a grip on--yet... But I'm _not_ going home, Frank--not even when it is allowed. I set out--I'm sticking--I'm not turning tail. It's what people have got to do--in space more than ever..."
Even when the seizure of fever came, and the sweat gathered on her lips, and her eyes went wild, she gritted her teeth and just clung to him. She had spunk--admirable, if perhaps destructive. "Love yuh," Frank kept saying. "Love yuh, Sweetie..."
