hat surprised him but he accepted it
gratefully.

"Can--can I help you, Sam?" she offered.

He looked at her, perhaps a little disappointed that her face was
serious. He said, "Sure you're not just trying to be nosey?"

A sharp pain darted into her eyes and she turned away.

"Wait," he said.

He called himself a fool. It was another of her tricks and he was
falling for it. He put a restraining hand on her arm and remembered
another time eight years ago when the touch would have sent electric
thrills coursing through him. Oddly, he felt a small remnant of the
pleasure stir within him.

"All right," he said gruffly. "All right, you can help."

So he was a fool. He'd been a fool before and chances were he'd be one
again more often than he'd care to admit. In a short while, hours
perhaps, he'd be gone--and he'd never see Dorothy again. Somehow the
thought was not as comforting as he had expected, and he tried to work
off a lingering doubt that rose to plague him.

They worked through the afternoon, testing any weak parts the rocket
might have, bracing the struts, checking for leaks. Sam found two
space-suits in the locker. He'd better leave one, he thought. They were
expensive and Dorothy might need one sometime. With him gone, she
couldn't afford to throw money around. Yet he might need it more than
she ever would. For a minute he stood undecided, and then he put them
both in the locker.

Dorothy came into the room and smiled wearily at him. "It'll go any
place now," she told him proudly.

In her eyes Sam saw an indefinable something. Something he might have
seen eight years ago--but mixed with it was a sadness he had not known
she could possess. Guiltily, he turned his gaze away.

"We--we'd better go in and eat," he said, looking at his watch without
seeing it.

She didn't say anything, and that was odd. Sam wished she would nag and
complain as she always had before. He wondered why he wished that, when
only a short time before he had wanted just the opposite. It was with a
start that he realized the reason. He was running away. That was it. He
was running away, and he wanted to be deathly certain that he had good
cause to run. Slowly the suspicion was creeping over him that the
situation had changed slightly, was changing more.

He would leave tonight, he told himself, before he weakened enough to
shelve his plans for another comfortable rut.

Sam's voice was a little hoarse. "What are you doing here? W