"You are all crouched over and seem to be limping. Does your leg still bother you?"
"No, my leg is fine."
"Then straighten up and "square your shoulders. Look proud. Don't they pay any attention to your posture at school?''
"What's wrong with the way I was walking?"
Bill had appeared in the door just as the subject had come up. "I'll show you, Mattie," he had interrupted, and proceeded to slouch across the room in a grotesque exaggeration of a spaceman's relaxed and boneless glide. The boy made it look like the amble of a chimpanzee. "You walk like that."
"The devil I do!"
"The devil you don't."
"Bill!" said his father. "Go wash up and get ready for dinner. And don't talk that way. Go on, now!" When the younger son had left his father turned again to Matt and said, "I thought I was speaking privately, Matt. Honestly, it's not as bad as Bill makes out; it's only about half that bad."
"But- Look, Dad, I walk just like everybody else-among spacemen, I mean. It comes of getting used to free-fall. You carry yourself sort of pulled in, for days on end, ready to bounce a foot off a bulkhead, or grab with your hands. When you're back under weight, after days and weeks of that, you walk the way I do. 'Cat feet' we call it."
"I suppose it would have that effect," his father had answered reasonably, "but wouldn't it be a good idea to practice walking a little every day, just to keep in form?"