Part 2

She found herself at the entrance to the pilot room. In one sweeping glance she saw a curved, silver board. Before it a man sat tranquilly. Nearer to her was Jack, hunched over the keyboard of a complex, compact machine, like a harried bookkeeper on the last day of the month.

Her lips formed his name, but she was silent. She watched him, his square, competent hands, his detached and distant face. Through the forward view-plate she saw a harsh, jagged line, the very edge of the Moon's disc. Next to it, and below, was the rear viewer, holding the shimmering azure shape of Earth.

"_All Earth watches me when I work, but with your eyes._"

Jack had said that to her once, long ago, when he still loved her.

"... human damnfoolishness botching up the equations...." He had said that once, too.

Miss Eagen was standing by the hospital door, watching her. When Marcia turned away without speaking to Jack, Miss Eagen smiled and held out her hand.

Marcia went to her and took the hand. They went into the hospital. Miss Eagen didn't speak; she seemed to be waiting.

"Yes, I know who Jack's spinning the ship for," said Marcia.

Miss Eagen looked an unspoken question.

Marcia said, painfully, "He's like the Captain of the _Elsinore_. He's risking his life for a--a stranger. A jaywalker. Not for me. Not even for his baby."

"Does it hurt to know that?"

Marcia looked into the smooth, strong face and said with genuine astonishment, "Hurt? Oh, no! It's so--so big!"

There was a sudden thunder. Over Miss Eagen's shoulder, through the port, Marcia saw the stars begin to move. Miss Eagen followed her gaze. "He's started the spin. You'll be all right now."

* * * * *

Marcia could never recall the rest of the details of the trip. There was the outboard bulkhead that drew her like a magnet, increasingly, until suddenly it wasn't an attracting wall, but normally and naturally "down." Then a needle, and another one, and a long period of deep drowsiness and unreality.

But through and through that drugged, relaxed period, Jack and the stars, the Moon and Sue Eagen danced and wove. Words slipped in and out of it like shreds of melody:

"A man comes to love the things he has to fight for." And Jack fighting--for his ship, for the Moon, for the new-building traditions of the great ones who would carry humanity out to the stars.

Sue Eagen was there, too, and the thing she shared with Jack. Of course there was something between them--so big a thing that there was nothing for her to fear in it.

Jack and Sue Eagen had always had it, and always would have; and now Marcia had it too. And with understanding replacing fear, Marcia was free to recall that Jack had worked with Sue Eagen--but it was Marcia that he had loved and married.

* * * * *

There was a long time of blackness, and then a time of agony, when she was falling, falling, and her lungs wanted to split, explode, disintegrate, and someone kept saying, "Hold tight, Marcia; hold tight to me," and she found Sue Eagen's cool strong hands in hers.

_Marcia. She called me Marcia._

More blackness, more pain--but not so much this time; and then a long, deep sleep.

A curved ceiling, but a new curve, and soft rose instead of the gunmetal-and-chrome of the ship. White sheets, a new feeling of "down" that was unlike either Earth or the ship, a novel and exhilarating buoyancy. And kneeling by the bed--

"Jack!"

"You're all right, honey."

She raised herself on her elbow and looked out through the unglazed window at the ordered streets of the great Luna Dome. "The Moon.... Jack, you did it!"

He snapped his fingers. He looked like a high-school kid. "Nothin' to it." She could see he was very proud. Very tired, too. He reached out to touch her.

She drew back. "You don't have to be sweet to me," she said quietly. "I understand how you must feel."

"Don't _have_ to?" He rose, bent over her, and slid his arms around her. He put his face into the shadowed warmth between her hair and her neck and said, "Listen, egghead, there's no absolute scale for courage. We had a bad time, both of us. After it was over, and I had a chance to think, I used it trying to look at things through your eyes. And that way I found out that when you walked up that gangway, you did the bravest thing I've ever known anyone to do. And you did it for me. It doesn't matter what else happened. Sue told me a lot about you that I didn't know, darling. You're ... real huge for your size. As for the bad part of what happened--nothing like it can ever happen again, can it?"

He hugged her. After a time he reached down and touched her swelling waist. It was like a benediction. "He'll be born on the Moon," he whispered, "and he'll have eyes the color of all Earth when it looks out to the stars."

"_She'll_ be born on the Moon," corrected Marcia, "and her name will be Sue, and ... and she'll be almost as good as her father."