“But now,” she persisted, “late in the day or not, Henry is going to study it. But he needs your help. I need your help.”

He regarded her, his eyes pale blue.

Jays let her drive him out to his home.

She drove along NASA Road One east through the Clear Lake area — marinas, apartment complexes, parks. When the road reached the coast and turned up to go north towards the Port of Houston, they came to Seabrook. This was an old run-down village, with wooden houses mounted on five-feet stilts.

Jays’s house must once have been handsome, but now it was faded by sun and busted down by the weather and neglect. Some of the houses in the area were being restored now, but not Jays’s. It looked, in fact, like a prop from Gone With The Wind.

It was kind of a nice area, Geena supposed, to retire. The houses would catch the light off of the ocean in the mornings. But it reeked of age.

The house was full of age too. A ticking clock. A dog, a quiet spaniel. A litter of aviation trophies, slowly gathering dust. A bookshelf with a row of his science fiction books, skinny hardback volumes. In the middle of it all, on a walnut coffee table, there was a double picture frame: Jays as a kid, gappy grin and slicked-back hair; and an image of Jays the man in his brief prime, bouncing over the tan brown lunar surface, suit glowing in the sun, on his way to one checklisted task or another.

It was the home of an old man who had been alone too long.

Jays made her a cup of coffee. Full of caffeine and cream, it was all but undrinkable, but she drank it anyway. For himself, he cracked a beer.

“So,” he said. “You’re trying to help out your ex-husband. Kind of complicated.” He smiled like a grandfather. “Not sure I ought to get involved.”

“Well, he blames me for canning his project.”

“The Shoemaker. Is he right?”

“I don’t think so. I spoke out against it. But you know how this stuff works.”

He nodded and took a pull of his beer. “You didn’t do him any damage. But you weren’t too smart about your marriage.”

“I was speaking up for Man-in-Space.”

“Sure,” he said drily. “Chewing the balls off of your husband had nothing to do with it.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“And now you want to make it up with him.”

“No. It’s done. I just don’t want it to finish in bitterness. We’ve got our whole lives ahead.”

He nodded. “Smart. A lot of sleepless nights to get through. Sometimes I wish… Well,” he said, “you think we should go back to the Moon?”

“No. I heard what you said. But we ought to get on with Station. The space lobby is always divided. We should get behind the project we have.”