"I wonder," said Klara, smiling to show that it was only an abstract point she was putting to us, "if that might not be what happened to some of the nonreturn missions."

"It is an absolute statistical certainty," said Francy, smiling back to show that he agreed to the rules of the game. He had been practicing his English, which was pretty good to start with, and now he was almost accent-free. He also possessed German, Russian, and fair amounts of the other romance languages to go with his Portuguese, as we had discovered when we tried some of our language-tape conversation on each other and found he understood us better than we understood ourselves. "Nevertheless, people go."

Klara and I were silent for a moment, and then she laughed. "Some do," she said.

I cut in quickly, "It sounds as if you want to go yourself, Francy."

"Have you ever doubted it?"

"Well, yes, actually I have. I mean, you're in the Brazilian Navy. You can't just take off, can you?"

He corrected me: "I can take off at any time. I simply cannot go back to Brazil after that."

"And it's worth that to you?"

"It's worth anything," he told me.

"Even--" I pressed, "if there's the risk of not coming back, or of getting messed up like the return today?" That had been a Five that had landed on a planet with some sort of plant life like poison ivy. It had been a bad one, we had heard.

"Yes, of course," he said.

Klara was getting restless. "I think," she said, "I want to go to sleep now."

There was some extra message in the tone of her voice. I looked at her and said, "I'll walk you back to your room."

"That's not necessary, Rob."

"I'll do it anyhow," I said, ignoring the message. "Good night, Francy. See you next week."

Klara was already halfway to the downshaft, and I had to hurry to catch up to her. I caught the cable and called down to her, "If you really want me to, I'll go back to my own place."

She didn't look up, but she didn't say that was what she wanted, either, so I got off at her level and followed her to her rooms. Kathy was sound asleep in the outer room, Hywa drowsing over a holodisk in our bedroom. Klara sent the maid home and went in to make sure the child was comfortable. I sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for her.

"Maybe I'm premenstrual," Klara said when she came back. "I'm sorry. I just feel edgy."

"I'll go if you want me to."

"Jesus, Rob, quit saying that!" Then she sat down next to me and leaned against me so that I would put my arm around her. "Kathy's so sweet," she said after a moment, almost wistfully.

"You'd like to have one of your own, wouldn't you?"