Suzy

Her voice was his only link with sanity. It was a beautiful voice. He never really thought what she might be.
Suzy, Suzy, Suzy!
Whit Clayborne looked at the luminous face of the bulkhead clock for the hundredth time that day. Sweat started out on his forehead, and he gripped his face with a convulsed hand, moaning in helpless anguish.
Suzy, Suzy, Suzy!
The clock clicked impersonally in the darkness, and Whit moaned again.
The cold. The darkness. The quiet. And the solitude. But there was always Suzy, linking him to the earth so many miles away.
One hundred and forty-three days out, four hundred and seven to go. The ritual of the report, designed to keep him thinking, day after day.
Nothing to report, sir, all equipment functioning. All graphs tracking. No abnormality of any kind. My health is good....
In four hundred and seven days they would bring him down, nearly mad, nearly dead, but his records well made on earth, and the record was what counted.
Five hundred and fifty days in an observation capsule, the economical human machine that did the work of fifty tons of unprojectable electronic equipment. Five hundred and fifty days of cold and quiet and solitude. The first eight men had died in the cold and loneliness of space, until they thought of Suzy, there in the WAC manned offices at Point Magu.
Suzy! My God, Suzy, where are you? Whit could stand the waiting until the time came close, then his mind would give away until her voice, bridging the space void came to him and brought him peace.
Whit? Whit, wake up, in case you're asleep. It's me, it's Suzy.