So he punished her. Tirelessly, relentlessly, ruthlessly, no matter how it made his heart ache. Made her scrub the floor. Do the dishes. Dust the furniture. All by hand, too.

She should have protested that the robot could do it.

She didn't.

He made her comb her own hair, and watched with a beady eye to make sure every tangle was out, trying to ignore the ache in his chest—watched the tears rolling down her cheeks as she pulled and yanked, but never a whimper.

And no games. No playing—not that she did, anyway. No 3DT programs.

He made her do everything. She out-cleaned Cinderella, out-shined the Man in the Moon, and moved in on the labors of Hercules. She was starting in on the Aegean Stables when she finally exploded. "I wish you'd get spaced, Gran'pa!"

Then she froze, shocked, appalled" at herself—but she'd said it.

"No," Whitey said, with his meanest grin, "I won't."

Then he had to deliver on it, of course. If anything happened to him now, she'd probably never come out of it. He got mighty tired of wearing the space suit, day in and day out, but after a week, she saw nothing had happened to him, and began to relax. And, when lightning failed to strike, she began to become a bit more irritable.

"Gran'pa, you're a meanie!"

"I know. But you have to clean your room anyway, Lona."

"Gran'pa, you're horrible!"

"Scrub the floor anyway, Lona."

"Gran'pa, I wish you knew what it feels like!"

"Finish combing your hair, Lona."

It was the hair that finally did it. One night, she yanked at a particularly bad snarl and cried, "Ouch!" And the tears rolled.

"Poor little girl," Whitey said, fairly oozing sympathy. "But crying won't get you out of it."

Her face reddened with real, genuine anger. "Gran'pa, drop dead!"

"But I didn't," Whitey explained.

"Yes, and I'm awful glad! But can't you stop wearing that space suit now, Gran'pa?"

"Sorry, child."

"But the kids next door are making fun of you!"

"Calling names doesn't hurt me."

He could see her registering that, but she went on. "But you look so silly!"

He shook his head. "Sorry. Can't do it."

"Yes you can! All you have to do is take it off!"

"No, I can't," he said, "because if anything happened to me, you'd think it was your fault."

"No, I won't! That's silly! You're not going to get hurt just because I said to!" Then she stopped, eyes wide, hearing her own words.

"That's a very important thing to realize, Lona," Dr. Ross was carefully sitting upwind of Whitey, and as far away as she could.

"Then Gran'pa can take off the suit now?"

"Yes, but not here, please."

"Do you really realize that just wishing won't make something happen?" Whitey demanded.

And he was appalled that Lona was silent.

"Why do you think it does, Lona?" the doctor said kindly.

" 'Cause they said so on the 3DT," Lona mumbled.

Whitey took a deep breath, and the doctor leaned back in her chair. "But those are just stories, Lona—fairy tales."

"No it's not! It was about Mr. Edison!"

Whitey stared.

"Oh, yes, the genius inventor," the doctor said slowly. "But he didn't just 'wish,' and see his invention appear all of a sudden, did he?"

"No." Lona looked at the floor.

"How did he make his wishes real, Lona?"

"He worked at 'em," the little girl answered. "He worked awful hard, and stayed up nights working a lot, until he'd built a new invention."

"Yes," the doctor said softly, "and later in his life, he drew pictures of new machines he'd thought of, and gave them to other men to make. But it all took work, Lona—work with people's hands, not just their minds."

She nodded.

"What wish do you want to make real, Lona?"

"For no one to ever be hurt again from a dome collapsing!" she said instantly.

Now it was the doctor who took the deep breath, though Whitey joined her. "That's very difficult," Dr. Ross warned.

"I don't care! I want to do it anyway!"

"Look, child," Whitey said, "this isn't just pushing your body, like scrubbing the kitchen floor. This means learning mathematics, and physics, and computer programming, and engineering—grindingly hard work."

"I can do it, Gran'pa!"

"I know you can," Whitey said softly, "but not overnight—or next week, or even next year."

"You mean I can't do it?"

"No, you can," Dr. Ross said quickly. "I'm sure you have the intelligence, and we know you have the industry. But it does take a long time, Lona—years and years. It takes high school, and college, and maybe even graduate studies. You won't be able to invent your fail-safe dome till you're in your twenties or thirties."

"I don't care how long it takes! I'm gonna to do it anyway!"

And Whitey and the doctor could both breathe easily again, finally. At least, Whitey thought, we're safe from suicide.

First, of course, she had to find out why the dome on Homestead had blown. It was touchy, but Dr. Ross had said she was ready for it. Still, she trembled when Whitey managed to get her the printout from the asteroid's systems computer. But the trembling stopped when she looked at it. "What's all this mean, Gran'pa?"

"I don't know, child. I never learned enough about computers to be able to make sense of it."

"Can't you hire somebody to tell you?"

Whitey shook his head. "I don't have that much money—and everybody in the Asteroid Belt is too busy trying to earn enough to stay alive."

She stared. "You mean nobody cared?"

"Oh, they cared, all right. There was an investigation, and I read the report—but all it said, really, was that there had been a horrible accident, and the dome field had collapsed."

"They didn't say how or why?"

Whitey shook his head. "Not that I could tell. Of course, I don't understand all the technical stuff."

"Can't you learn it?"

"I could," Whitey said slowly, "if I didn't have to worry about earning a living."

"Well, then, I'll learn it!" Lona said, with determination, and turned back to the computer screen.

And she did. But before she could begin to learn programming, she had to learn a little about how computers work—and that meant she had to learn math, and a little physics. But when she came to microcircuits, she had to learn enough chemistry to understand silicon—and that meant more physics, and more physics meant more math. Then she began to become interested in mathematics for its own sake, and Whitey pointed out that she had to learn enough history to understand the way people were thinking when they invented programming, and history turned out to be pretty interesting, too.

Meanwhile, of course, Whitey was filling her head with bedtime stories about the Norse gods, and the fall of Troy, and the travels of Don Quixote.

"Isn't there any more, Gran'pa?"

"Well, yes, child, but there isn't time to tell it all."

So, of course, she had to start reading the books, to find out what Gran'pa had left out—and that was more fun than 3DT. Not that she watched it that much, there wasn't time. Oh, Gran'pa insisted that she take a few hours every afternoon to play with the other children, and now she was so full of life that she made friends in no time.

And that, of course, was probably why the Board of Education came knocking on the door.

Whitey wasn't about to let her be locked into six hours a day listening to material she'd already learned, of course. Not that he would have dreamed of claiming he knew better than the education professionals—for normal children. But Lona was a special case, and even they would have had to admit that.

If he had bothered arguing. But there were four school districts in Ceres City, and a dozen more on the asteroids nearby, all close enough to scoot over on a rocket sled and visit her friends every afternoon, and Dr. Ross once a month, and whatever cabaret Whitey was singing at in the evening. Not that she had much contact with any of what went on in the clubs, of course—she brought her notebook computer along.