Beth smiled at Ken. “You’d love having a couple of aliens on board, wouldn’t you? Like they do in the movies.”

They obviously had a good marriage. “Tell me about your kids,” Hutch asked.

“A couple of girls,” said Beth. “Madeleine and Hannah. They’re teens. They’d have enjoyed meeting you.”

“We can arrange it when we get home.”

Wally seemed somewhat alone. Hutch wondered if he’d left someone behind. She missed her cop. She wasn’t sure she hadn’t lost him. That last pizza they’d shared hadn’t gone well, and he’d made no effort to get in touch with her and say good-bye before she left.

She’d have enjoyed having Charlie and Maureen on board. Maybe one day, families would travel routinely across the stars. Why don’t we take a run over to Aldebaran and say hello to Uncle Mike?

•  •  •

“All those silent stars,” Beth said as they left the cluster. “You’d think somebody in there would have a transmitter.”

“I’m sure somebody does,” said Hutch. “But it’s time we go to Calliope.”

They watched comedies more frequently than anything else. They turned it into a game, using technology that allowed them to insert one of themselves into a role in the film. The chosen person left the porch and the others decided which role he or she would be inserted into. Which role, they claimed, best fitted the reality of the individual. Ken became Jasper Hall, the cheapskate comedian who’d do anything to hang onto a dime. Derek showed up as the host of The Night Show, where he introduced Beth as the whacky journalist of Breaking Now. Wally played Horace Evans in one of the haunted museum films, where he directed a team of archeologists tracking down the supposed truth about various unexplained historical events. And they brought Hutch in as the lead in Cool Clara, a high school teacher given to panic attacks because her students are constantly out of control.

Mostly, though, they just sat on the porch talking. Hutch got more serious about encouraging everyone to establish a workout program. Derek and Ken, both talented chess players, developed a serious rivalry. Wally spent a lot of time in the workout room, but mostly what he wanted was to watch Beth and Hutch do their stretch exercises. The area could only accommodate three at a time, so Hutch set up a schedule, warned her passengers that the limited level of artificial gravity, well below Earth normal, could create problems if they didn’t stay with the program. Eventually, everyone got in line, after Hutch pointed out that they had to make a choice: do the exercises or pass on dessert.

Ken lodged a complaint. “You know,” he said, “when we started, I thought we’d have more important things to worry about than the distribution of apple pie.”

Beth Squires’s Notes