“Why did you come,” she sobbed. “It would have been all right if you had not come.”
“Don’t blame me,” he shouted back at her. “It’s this play-acting you’ve been doing.”
“You must stay here,” she said. “You can’t go away and leave, me now.”
“What am I supposed to do,” he demanded angrily. “Leave twelve hundred men and women out there in orbit forever just because at your age you still can’t face reality?”
“You can’t leave,” she sobbed again.
Deitrich stormed out of the apartment. He took a cab to his office, snapped at his secretary, and then fell flat on his face over an unexpected cleaning roach.
He sat up with blood gushing from his nose down his tunic onto the floor. The startled machine limped over to a fresh spot of blood on the carpet, examining it with irregularly twitching antennas.
“Get out of here,” howled Deitrich. The robot scuttled obediently if unevenly back to the chute, dust wheezing from a ruptured sac, and disappeared.
Deitrich swore. The blood stopped gushing and became a flow. A doctor who had been summoned by his frightened secretary came in quickly and was amused. But he also made skillful repairs, and the only souvenir left of the accident was a bloodstained tunic.
After the doctor left Deitrich sat at his desk staring at the closed door. Gloomy and remorseful, he contemplated the situation. He felt that somehow he had been cheated again, and knew it was that which had made him angry with Sara. It had been a trap that he had helped to lay himself.