"No, you don't. Why, you're practically at home-you can just step to a port and see it."
"That's no help."
"And it hasn't been so terribly long since you've been home. Me-it took me two years just to make the trip to Terra; there's no way of telling when I'll ever see home again." Pete's eyes got a faraway look; his voice became almost lyrical. "You don't know what it's like, Matt. You've never seen it. You know what they say: 'Every civilized man has two planets, his own and Ganymede.' "
"Huh?"
Pete did not even hear him. "Jupiter hanging overhead, filling half the sky- " He stopped. "It's beautiful, Matt. There's no place like it."
Matt found himself thinking about Des Moines in a late summer evening . . . with fireflies winking and the cicadas singing in the trees, and the air so thick and heavy you could cup it in your hand. Suddenly he hated the steel shell around him, with its eternal free-fall and its filtered air and its artificial lights. "Why did we ever sign up, Pete?"
"I don't know. I don't know!"
"Are you going to resign?"
"I can't. My father had to put up a bond to cover my passage both ways-if I leave voluntarily he's stuck for it."
Tex came in, yawning and scratching. "What's the matter with you guys? Can't you sleep? Don't you want anybody else to sleep?"