Chapman held the letter in both hands, but the paper still shook. The others had left the bunker, the men of the Second taking those of the Third in hand to show them the machinery and apparatus that was outside, point out the deadly blisters underneath the pumice covering, and show them how to keep out of the Sun and how to watch their air supply.
He was glad he was alone. He felt something trickle down his face and tasted salt on his lips.
The mail had been distributed and he had saved his latest letter until the others had left so he could read it in privacy. It was a short letter, very short.
It started: "Dear Joel: This isn't going to be a nice letter, but I thought it best that you should know before you came home."
There was more to it, but he hadn't even needed to read it to know what it said. It wasn't original, of course. Women who change their minds weren't exactly an innovation, either.
He crumpled the paper and held a match to it and watched it burn on the steel floor.
Three years had been a long time. It was too long a time to keep loving a man who was a quarter of a million miles away. She could look up in the night sky when she was out with somebody else now and tell him how she had once been engaged to the Man in the Moon.
It would make good conversation. It would be funny. A joke.
He got up and walked over to his phonograph and put the record on. The somewhat scratchy voice sang as if nothing had happened
Way Back Home by Al Lewis.