Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again, walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm with some silent melody.
And you, Laura, were with him.
"Meet the Brat," he said. "My sister Laura."
I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.
"I'm happy to meet you, Ben," you said. "I've heard of no one else for the past year."
A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an introduction of Charlie.
You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol. His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.
And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I knew, would find them ugly.
You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: "It's a privilege to meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first to reach the Moon!"
Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: "Still going to spend the weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?"