Dorothy bit her lip. “When I think that we almost went right by it without suspecting. . . . almost missed it completely, I mean.”
Nick clasped her shoulder, his eyes fixed upon the almost invisible planetoid slowly growing before them. “Were you and your brother—very good friends?”
“I scarcely knew him,” she murmured. “He ran away from home when I was seven or eight, and we only saw him once in awhile after that. I think it was nearly six years after he first hit out before he came back. He was mature then and I was just a silly adolescent, but I idolized him because he was so famous.
“He spent nearly a whole month with me—with us, that is—about four years before he signed up with your father. But all that seems unreal now. If he’s—still alive, I’ll probably say ‘hello, Harry,’ and kiss him with sisterly affection and be glad he’s all right, but it won’t really mean much. What about your father, Nick?”
He frowned. “Dad and I were pretty close. Matter of fact, I never called him ‘dad’ until after he disappeared. It was always Steve. He preferred that; didn’t like his own name, though I didn’t know about it for a long time.
“I never could figure out the relationships between the other kids I knew and their parents. I always felt sorry for them; you see, Steve explained to me once—it’s amazing that I got it the first time—that ‘father’ or ‘dad’ or ‘pop’ was something I’d better call him when other people were around just for the sake of appearances. And, when I was in school, why he was ‘my father.’ But when we were alone together—or just the three of us, Steve, Mater, and I—we didn’t have to be formal at all. We were always the best of friends.”
She drew closer to him. “I’d like to meet—Steve.”
He looked at her as if it were the first time they were meeting. “Steve would like you, too,” he replied.
The alarm clanged for some time before they noticed it.
“Sorry!” exclaimed Timbie as he came into the room. “We’ve spotted it. It’s less than 500 miles in diameter.”