Joanie didn’t like any of this one bit. It just called attention to themselves and what they were trying to accomplish here—and what they were trying to accomplish demanded privacy because you didn’t entertain visitors on a spaceship, did you? Wasn’t that the whole point of blasting off into space in the first place? And look what had happened in Mexico. Did they really want a repeat of that?

She brought it up during a group meeting one night when Tim was back from New York and the martinis were flowing and the children, under Lori’s and Nancy’s direction, had prepared the evening meal of tuna casserole blackened around the edges and broccoli so overboiled it had the consistency of pudding, a meal everyone had felt obligated to praise, right down to the dessert, which was three pans of fudge brownies topped with cream cheese and walnuts.

“I don’t know,” she said, leaning into the table to address Tim, who, as always, was talking nonstop, and she waited till he paused and lifted his eyes to her before going on. “What I’m saying is I don’t know how much good all this publicity is really doing us—”

“We need money,” Tim said, giving her an even look. “If for nothing else”—he tapped his glass—“for gin alone. You have any idea how much gin we’re going through here?”

“I’m serious, Tim. I mean, the kids are even hearing about it at school. The other kids are calling them names, mind-benders, freaks, astronauts—”

“Astronauts?” Ken said, grinning. “Hairy women I can understand, but astronauts?”

Charlie, seated across the table from her between Alice and Fanchon, cut in to say, “The proper term is psychonauts, and we ought to get them all to wear jumpsuits or sweatshirts or something with THE PSYCHONAUTS emblazoned on them in big red letters, with maybe a red light bulb underneath it, shooting out rays, what do you think?”

“Perfect,” Ken said. “I can see it already. The school mascot is just a big glowing bulb dancing around the field. Or no, a brain. Pink, of course. With all the convolutions pulsing.”

“The Millbrook High Convoluters,” Charlie said. “That ought to put a scare into the opposition.”

What she thought was that they ought to get serious here a minute, just once, just for a minute, and was that too much to ask? She felt a flash of anger with Charlie, who always had to make a joke of everything. “Easy for you to say, but you don’t have any kids.”