This time Miss Eagen didn't react at all, and Marcia knew that she had to speak up. "No, Jack. I knew weeks ago."
There was no describable change in his face, but the taut skin of his space-tanned cheek seemed, somehow, to draw inward. His eyebrow ridges seemed to be more prominent, and he looked older, and very tired. Softly and slowly he asked, "What in God's name made you get on the ship?"
"I had to, Jack. I had to."
"Had to kill yourself?" he demanded brutally. "This tears it. This ties it up in a box with a bloody ribbon-bow. I suppose you know what this means—what I've got to do now?"
"Spin ship," she replied immediately, and looked up at him pertly, like a kindergarten child who knows she has the right answer.
He groaned.
"You said you could do it."
"I can ... try," he said hollowly. "But—why, why?"
"Because," she said bleakly, "I learned long ago that a man grows to love what he has to fight for."
"And you were going to make me fight for you and the child—even if the lives of a hundred and seventy people were involved?"