Helen slept peacefully. Yet already you could see, in the big oblique eyes, the odd convolutions of the ears, the bones underneath the baby fat, that this too would become a face such as none of her forebears had worn.
Sigurd turned his head. His countenance was going to be rugged, bearing at least a memory of his father’s. “Hiu-yo!” he piped, as if the small clash earlier had never happened. “Madre, you promised you’d tell ‘bout Jefe Guthrie at Mars. Now?”
He could reach out and take hold of her heart any time he wanted. All of them could. Though he didn’t know about his kinship, and maybe never would, Fireball’s lord was as much a legend to him as to everyone else. Dagny, who had stories directly from her grandfather, couldn’t stop mention of them from slipping free once in a while.
“This instant?” she demurred. “I’ve soon got to rustle the rations.”
“Details later.”
“Tell, tell!” Francy cried.
Dagny yielded. It was a funny story, how Anson Guthrie shot himself into orbit around Deimos and thereby confounded his opponents. What the incident had meant to politics and policy did not matter to this audience.
“—and that’s why spacefolk call the crater Whisky’s Grief.” What was keeping the geologists?
“Why didn’t the gov’ment want Fireball there?” Gaby had joined the group. Her mother couldn’t well fob the girl’s question off, could she?
“That’s complicated to explain, darling. It wasn’t one government, it was three of them at loggerheads. Space is supposed to belong to the whole human race, but everybody is a citizen of some or other country— you and I count as Ecuadorans, your father’s French, the Guptas are Indian—and our governments make demands on us that often aren’t the same. Then, if we’re with Fireball—Hoy! There come our wanderers.”
Through a window Dagny saw the camion trundle around the eastern flank of this mountain. Absurd, the relief that washed through her. If ‘Mondvs party had met trouble, they’d have called to let her know. Nevertheless, they were notably later than usual, and Anson had been with them … “Another time,” she pledged. “Right now I’d better hustle.”
She had no real need for haste, but making ready worked the tension off. Start dinner. When she had leisure for it, she cooked according to standards she had learned from Edmond, unless he wanted to himself. In the field, and she riding herd on the gangs at Tychopolis, they settled for prepackaged stuff. But bring forth aperitifs and glasses. Change her coverall for a dress. ,’Mond would do the corresponding thing, after a shower, and the kids would be quiet, though welcome to join in the talk. Happy hour, Guthrie called it. Oh, but nearly all her hours were happy.
At odd moments she watched the vehicle arrive, the riders unload what they had collected, the graduate assistants carry those boxes into the field van, Ross and Marietta slept there, and generally had their meals there. It wasn’t exclusion on the Beynacs’ part. The young people rated some privacy; eating, sleeping, and laboratory studies weren’t everything they did in those quarters. Father and son approached their roving house. Against dun rock and long shadows, their spacesuits dazzled with whiteness. What a liberation dust-repellent impregnants were! “Don’t snub technofixes,” Guthrie used to say. “Progress consists of ‘em. Has, ever since Ung Uggson chipped his first flint.”
Dagny lost sight of them as they stepped onto the gangramp. Noise followed, outer airlock valve opened and shut, gas pumped back into the reserve tank while boots banged down the companionway to the lockers: A bass grumble drifted up, “God damn, I smell like a dead goat,” and Dagny smiled.
Skinsuits went into the washer, which began to purr. Edmond and Anson returned to deck level. Dagny met them at the hatch. Both wore bathrobes. No puritan, the man remained uncomfortable with the casual nudity common among Moon folk. At least, he felt adults should avoid it before children of the opposite sex.
Dagny sprang to him. “/ think you smell exciting,” she laughed. “C’mere, you.” She cast her arms around his neck and her mouth against his. .
After a second or two she let go and stepped back. “Hey,” she said, “that was like kissing a robot. A sweaty robot, but otherwise not programmed for it. What’s the matter?”