"But Bart, it's a fool's errand!" The girl's eyes were huge, filling with tears. "You have a good job, a good home—you just can't go—"
He blinked at her, unbelieving. "With a chance like this? To go to space? I couldn't stay home—"
She looked at him, and then at me, with the strangest baffled pain in her eyes. She looked, suddenly, as though the bottom had dropped out of her world. "You—you mean that, Bart?"
The bafflement spread across Bart's face as he looked down at her. "Marny, I—I don't understand this. You know what I've wanted. I've told you time and again—"
"Oh, yes, talk! But I never dreamed you meant it! Everybody talks about going to space."
"But not everyone gets the chance!" His voice was sharp in the still, hot room.
"But only a fool would go!"
"Then I'm a fool." He turned away, and sank down slowly in a chair. "I want it more than anything in the world."
The silence was deafening. When she spoke, her voice was hardly audible. "Then I guess that's all there is to it."