elf, Nance," he said enthusiastically. "I'll arrange
for a caravan from Post One to stop by on Phobos and pick you up.
Also--there's my old question... So, what'll it be, Nance? Maybe we can
feel a little surer of ourselves, now. We can work the rest out. Come
and look, hang around--see how everything shakes down, if you'd rather."

He waited for the light-minutes to pass, before he could hear her voice.
"Hello, Frank..." There was the same eager quaver. "Still pretty jammed,
Frank... But we know about it here--from Art... Some of the Pallastown
convalescents will be migrating your way... I'll wrangle free and come
along... Maybe in about a month..."

He didn't know quite whether to take her at her word--or whether she was
somehow hedging. In the Big Vacuum, the human mind seemed hard put,
quite, to know itself. Distances and separations were too great.
Emotions were too intense or too stunned. This much he had learned to
understand. Perhaps he had lost Nance. But maybe, still--in some bleak,
fatalistic way--it would be just as well in the end, for them both.

"Sure, Nance," he said gently. "I'll call again--the regular time..."

Right after that he was talking, over a much greater span, to Art Kuzak.
"First phase about completed, Art... Finger to thumb--in spite of the
troubles elsewhere. So let it roll...!"

Art Kuzak's reply had an undercurrent of jubilance, as if whatever he
knew now was better than he had expected. "Second phase is en route. Joe
will be along... Don't be surprised..."

Joe Kuzak's approach, a few hundred hours later, made a luminous cluster
in the sky, like a miniature galaxy. It resolved itself into vast bales,
and all of the stellene rings--storage and factory--of Post Three. Also
there were over a hundred men and thirty-three wives. Many of them were
Pallastown refugees.

Nelsen helped Joe through the airlock of the ring that he had hoped
would be his and Nance's. "Bubbtown, huh, Frank?" Joe chuckled. "The
idea is spreading faster than we had believed, and we aren't the only
ones that have got it. The timing is just right. People are scared, fed
up. Out Here--and on Earth, too... Most of the guys that are single in
this crowd have girls who will be on the way soon. Some of the tougher
space-fitness tests are being junked. We're even screening a small batch
of runaways from Ceres--to be included in the next load. An experiment.
But it should work out. They're just like anybody... Art is all