"Dinner's on the table," the woman said. "We may as well go back into the house while we've still got a home, and gather the children around us, and tell them a few more lies about what the future is going to be like in the Colony, now that one father in three will be bringing nuclear fuel cylinders home with him."
The man—his name was John Lynton—nodded and they returned into the pre-fab. Lynton preceded his wife into the dwelling and the woman paused for an instant in the doorway to stare back at the long metal shed where the six cylinders were reposing ... letting her gaze take in as well the double row of foot-high cactus plants which encircled the yard and the sun-reddened stretch of open desert beyond. Then she let the door swing shut behind her, and turned to face her four hungry children.
One thought alone sustained Grace Lynton at that moment. There had never been any need, so far, for the children to go to bed hungry. Their hunger was due solely to the demands of healthy young appetites when dinner was a little delayed and they had been playing strenuously in the yard all afternoon or going on exploring expeditions.
[12]
They were all downstairs now, waiting to be fed, hardy perennials like all children everywhere. Thomas with his shining morning face—it seemed to stay that way right up until bedtime—and Susan, seven, and still doll-wedded, and the twins, Hedy and Louise. Three girls and one boy, and Grace Lynton felt a little sorry for her son at times, until she remembered that a boy of thirteen isn't troubled by too many girls in a family when he's seven or eight years their senior. The girls were simply very young children to him and he was—well, right next door at least to being grown up.
"All right," John Lynton said, seating himself at the head of the table. "Let's fall to and see who gets through first."
"Did you have a tough day, Dad?" Thomas asked, reaching for a knife and fork, and drawing a still steaming serving bowl toward him. His unruly hair was so blond it seemed almost white and there was a double row of freckles across the bridge of his nose.
The other three children were brunettes, with hair ranging in color from chestnut brown to jet black. Even the twins did not closely resemble each other, as non-identical twins so often fail to do.
"Don't annoy your father with questions now, Thomas ... please," Grace Lynton said.