“Play games on your own time. You’re on Fireball time now. Prove that we can trust you.”
Thus she led them back to their tasks. Francis, slight and blond, had barely glanced up from his reading. Past experience made Dagny believe he’d observed much more than he let on.
Helen wailed. Dagny ascertained she didn’t need changing but was hungry, undid her tunic, and laid the infant to her right breast. (An excellent feature of life on the Moon—except when centrifuging, you could leave off the bra and yet never begin to sag.) “I’m busy too, dear,” she said, and returned forward.
The dark little head pumped milk from her. Warmth and love flowed back. Yes, never mind all the extra trouble during pregnancy, she wanted anyway one more, another life to brighten hers and ‘Mond’s before it flew out into the unbounded future.
Unbounded in space. What was there for Earth? It shone so blue-and-white resplendent above the mountains. How much misery, how much terror and despair did the clouds veil? Poor North America, impoverished and stultified, the Renewal clinging like pitch to a semblance of power while the reality crumbled away in lawlessness. Poor Middle East, Befehl withdrawn, chaos Joose, fanaticism a tide rising higher for every day that passed … But in landsmore fortunate civilization flourished, prosperity, liberty, and the true renewal, the healing of the planet, paid for by the riches that Fireball brought home … The woman held her baby close.
When she seated herself again at the office com, fears slipped away and Helen became simply a sweet presence on the fringe of awareness. Packer’s eyes widened appreciatively, then he too got straight back to work. They were occupied for the next couple of hours, save when Dagny took her offspring back to the crib. She found Gaby and Sigurd at their education. They did not act especially chastened.
“Um, yes, this sounds reasonable,” Packer said at last. Don’t just cut out the unreliable rock and replace with concrete. The metal frame of the building would carry downward the blaze at midday, the space-coldness at midnight; in the course of years, differing coefficients of thermal expansion could have fatigue effects. Therefore, seal a heat exchanger grid into the plug, such as automatically equalized temperatures. It would take some designing, but probably no more than an off-the-shelf program could handle, and the concept might well prove useful at other sites.
“Oh, sure, first we run a simple model through the computer to see whether the notion’s loco,” Packer went on. “No, first we hear what Dr. Beynac thinks.” He was forever deferential to the man who saved his life and limb, not in any servile way but in an abiding gratitude that Edmond and Dagny respected.
“He’s due back soon,” she said. “Overdue, in fact. I’ll talk with him and call you this time tomorrow, okay?” Earth’s tomorrow; the sun over Lunar Taurus would stand a dozen degrees higher. “Happy landings.”
She switched off, rose, stretched cramped muscles, and wished for an extra go in the whirly. No, too much trouble, and dinner to fix. Later, this evening, early bedtime—She grinned. Horizontal exercise didn’t count, officially, but damn if she didn’t wake at dawnwatch perkier than after anything else.
She went aft. Study time was past. Gaby and Sigurd had not resumed their curious game. Dagny wondered if they would before they were home in Tychopolis and the privacy of their rooms. The girl slouched on a seat, staring beyond the windows, an electronic pad on her knees. Her lips moved, she scribbled something with the stylus, then again she was in reverie. Dagny decided not to pry. Francy had put a show of fractals on one terminal, or gotten a sibling to do it for him, and watched fascinated. Hunched over a table, Sigurd moved his toy soldiers and their machines through a battle. “Ee-ee-pow,” he breathed. “S-s-s-s. Crack.” They represented UN peacekeepers and imaginary villains, but Dagny doubted that was what he had in mind. She hardly dared ask.
Not that she and ‘Mond let their youngsters terrorize them. Not that affection and cheer were missing. But these, and their kind being bora to other couples, would inherit the Moon, which was not Earth.