"I'll be as brief as I can," Harker promised. He stepped around the barricade and entered.
Helen Bryant, oldest of the daughters, sat solicitously by her father's bedside, glaring at him with the tender expression of a predatory harpy.
Harker said, "If you'll excuse me, Miss Bryant, your father and I have some important business to discuss."
"I'm his daughter. Can't I—"
"I'm afraid not," Harker said coldly. He waited while she made her proud retreat, then took her seat at the side of the bed.
"Afternoon, Harker," Bryant said in a tomblike croak.
He was not a pretty sight. He was seventy-three, and could easily pass for twice that age—a shrunken, leathery little man with rheumy, cataracted eyes and a flat, drooping face. There was little about him that was heroic, now. He was just a dying old man.
The needles of an intravenous feed-line penetrated his body at various points. He no longer had the strength to swallow or to digest. It was difficult to believe that this man had made the first successful round-trip flight to another planet, back in 1984, and that from his early thirties until his stroke four years ago he had been a figure of world importance, whose words were eagerly rushed into print whenever he cared to make a statement.
He said, "How does it look for next Thursday?"
Harker's jaws tightened. "Pretty good. I hope to be able to swing it."