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Nelsen passed through an airlock, where live steam and a special silicone oil accomplished the all-important disinfection of his Archer, his bubb, and the outside of his small, sealed baggage roll. Armor and bubb he left racked with rows of others. It wasn't till he got into the reception dome lounge that he saw Nance Codiss. She didn't rush at him.
There were quick movements here and there a kiss, a touch of hands, a small gesture, a strained glance. Frank Nelsen blew a kiss jauntily to Nance Codiss, the neighbor girl, who waved to him from the background. "So long, Frank..." He wondered if he saw a fierce envy showing in her face. Miss Rosalie Parks, his high school Latin teacher, was there, too.
Keep wearing those Archers, people. Glad the kid likes to play in his..." Nelsen had donned his own Seven, with the helmet fastened across his chest by a strap. At the KRNH office, there was a letter, which luckily hadn't been sent out to Post Eight. The tone was more serious than that of any that Nance Codiss had sent before. "Dear Frank: I'm actually coming your way.
That same afternoon, Frank Nelsen and Nance Codiss sat in the garden. "If I blur, just hold me tight, Frankie," she said. "Everything is still too strange to quite get a grip on yet... But I'm not going home, Frank not even when it is allowed. I set out I'm sticking I'm not turning tail. It's what people have got to do in space more than ever..."
"All right, Frank," she said quietly. "Follow your nose. It's just liable to be right on the beam for you. I might follow mine. I don't know." "Joe and Two-and-Two are around if you need anything, Nance," he said. "I'll tell them. Gimp, I hear, is on the way. Not much point in my waiting for him, though..." Somehow he loved Nance Codiss as much or more than ever.
As usual, time was crowding Nelsen. He had to get back on the job. He had just a couple of hours left. He wrote a letter to Nance Codiss, answering one of hers funny, he'd never yet tried to contact her vocally. Being busy, being cautious about using a beam these were good reasons. Now there was hardly enough spare time to reach twice across the light-minutes.
"But you know the Belt. That makes a big difference... All right you're going..." Nance Codiss didn't have that experience. Her lab background wasn't enough. So she was stuck, on Mars. Nelsen had been pestering her to marry him. Now, in a corner of the crowded lounge, he tried again. She shook her head. "You'd still have to leave me, Frank," she told him.
"It's barren we could land," Nelsen suggested quickly. They visited the hill a dozen times safely, breaking no printed rule. But maybe they shouldn't have come so often to that same place. In life there is always a risk which is food for a fierce soul. Frank Nelsen and Nance Codiss were fierce souls. They'd stand by the heli and look out over Syrtis, their gloved fingers entwined.
While he waited, Frank Nelsen's mind fumbled back to the lost phantom of Jarviston, Minnesota, again. To a man named Jig Hollins who had got married, stayed home. Yellow? Hell...! Nelsen imagined the comforts he might have had in the Space Force. He coaxed up a dream girl blonde, dark, red-headed with an awful wistfulness. He thought of Nance Codiss, the neighbor kid.
Some of the guys talked already said you were asleep." "Hi, Paul yeah! Terra still looks big and beautiful. We're okay. Amazing, isn't it, how just a few watts of power, beamed out in a thin thread, will reach this far, and lots farther? Hey will you open and shut your front door? Let's hear the old customer's bell jingle... Best to you, to J. John, to Nance Codiss, Miss Parks everybody..."
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