Even if it cost a few lives.

Even if the lives included Klara's and mine. Did I, I asked myself, want my son -- if I ever had a son -- to spend his childhood the way I had spent mine?

We dropped off the up-cable at Level Babe and heard voices. I didn't pay attention to them. I was coming to a resolution in my mind. "Klara," I said, "listen. Let's--"

But Klara was looking past my shoulder. "For Christ's sake!" she said. "Look who's here!"

And I turned, and there was Shicky fluttering in the air, talking to a girl, and I saw with astonishment that the girl was Willa Forehand. She greeted us, looking both embarrassed and amused.

"What's going on?" I demanded. "Didn't you just ship out -- like maybe eight hours ago?"

"Ten," she said.

"Did something go wrong with the ship, so you had to come back?" Klara guessed.

Willa smiled ruefully. "Not a thing. I've been there and back. Shortest trip on record so far: I went to the Moon."

"Earth's moon?"

"That's the one." She seemed to be controlling herself, to keep from laughter. Or tears.

Shicky said consolingly, "They'll surely give you a bonus, Willa. There was one that went to Ganymede once, and the Corporation divvied up half a million dollars among them."

She shook her head. "Even I know better than that, Shicky, dear. Oh, they'll award us something. But it won't be enough to make a difference. We need more than that." That was the unusual, and somewhat surprising, thing about the Forehands: it was always "we." They were clearly a very closely knit family, even if they didn't like to discuss that fact with outsiders.

I touched her, a pat between affection and compassion. "What are you going to do?"

She looked at me with surprise. "Why, I've already signed up for another launch, day after tomorrow."

"Well!" said Klara. "We've got to have two parties at once for you! We'd better get busy. . . ." And hours later, just before we went to sleep that night, she said to me, "Wasn't there something you wanted to say to me before we saw Willa?"

"I forget," I said sleepily. I hadn't forgotten. I knew what it was. But I didn't want to say it anymore.

There were days when I worked myself up almost to that point of asking Klara to ship out with me again. And there were days when a ship came in with a couple of starved, dehydrated survivors, or with no survivors, or when at the routine time a batch of last year's launches were posted as nonreturns. On those days I worked myself up almost to the point of quitting Gateway completely.

Most days we simply spent deferring decision. It wasn't all that…

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