The room was definitely a man’s room, with books, and models of the fighter planes Johnny Baker had flown, and a Skylab, with broken wings; and a large framed picture of a bulky-suited man crawling in space along one of those wings, a faceless, alien shape, disconnected from the spacecraft, risking the loneliest death ever if he let go for even an instant. The NASA medal hung below the picture.

Mementos of times past. But only the past. There were no pictures of the Shuttle, delayed once more; no reminders of the Pentagon, Johnny’s present assignment. Two pictures of the children, one with Ann in the background, short, browned, competent Ann, who already had a look of puzzled unhappiness in the photo.

His hand was wrapped around the glass, but he had forgotten glass and hand. Maureen could watch his face without his knowing it. Johnny Baker saw only the screen.

Parabolic orbits diagrammed against the concentric circular paths of the planets. Old photos of Halley’s Comet and Brooks’s Comet and Cunningham’s Comet and others, culminating in a blurred pinpoint that was Hamner-Brown. A man with large insectile glasses lectured with fierce intensity:

“Oh, we’ll get hit someday. It probably won’t be an asteroid, either. The orbits are too nearly fixed. There must have been asteroids whose orbits intersected Earth’s, but those have had four billion years to hit us, and most of them eventually did,” said the lecturer. “They hit so long ago that even the craters are gone, weathered away, except for the biggest and the newest. But look at the Moon!

“The comets are different.”

The lecturer’s pointer traced a parabola drawn in chalk. “Some mass way out there beyond Pluto, maybe an undiscovered planet… we even have a name for it. Persephone.

Some mass disturbs the orbits of these great snowballs, and they come down on our heads in a wake of boiling chemicals. None of them have ever had a chance to hit the Earth until they get thrown down into the inner system. One day we’ll be hit. We’d have about a year’s warning. Maybe more, if we can learn enough about Hamner-Brown.”

Then an antiseptic young woman proclaimed that she wasn’t married to her house, and was told that was why Kalva Soap had invented a new disinfectant for her toilet bowl… and Johnny Baker came smiling back into the world. “He really makes his points, doesn’t he?”

“It is well done. Did I tell you I met the man who put it together? I met Tim Hamner, too. At the same party with Harvey Randall. Hamner’s a case. Manic. He’d just discovered his comet, and he couldn’t wait to tell everyone.”

Johnny Baker sipped his drink. Then, after a long pause, he said, “Some funny rumors in the Pentagon.”

“Oh?”

“Gus called. From Downey. Seems Rockwell’s refurbishing an Apollo. And there’s some mutters about diverting one of the Titan boosters from a Big Bird to something else. Know anything?”

She sipped her drink and felt a wave of sadness. Now she knew why Johnny Baker had called yesterday. After six weeks in the Pentagon, six weeks in Washington with no attempt to see her, and then…

And I was going to surprise him. Some surprise.

“Dad’s trying to get Congress to fund a comet-study mission,” Maureen said.

“This for real?” Johnny demanded.

“It’s for real.”

“But…” His hands were shaking. His hands never shook. John Baker had flown fighters over Hanoi, and his maneuvers were always perfect. The MIGs never had a chance. And once he’d taken splinters out of his crew chief when there wasn’t time to get the medics. There was a splinter in the chief’s chest and Baker had removed it and sliced deftly to expose the artery, clamped it together with steady fingers while the chief screamed and the Cong mortars thudded onto the field, and his hands had never shaken.

But they were shaking now. “Congress won’t put up the money.”

“They might. The Russians are planning a mission. Can’t let them outdo us,” Maureen said. “Peace depends on showing them we’re still willing to compete if that’s the way they want it. And if we compete, we win.”

“I don’t care if it’s Martians we’re competing with. I’ve got to go. I’ve got to.” He drained his scotch His hands were suddenly steady.

Maureen watched in fascination. He’s stopped shaking because he’s got a mission. And I know what it is. Me. To get me to get him on that ship. A minute ago he might really have been in love with me. Not now.

“I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “We don’t have all that much time together, and I’m laying this on you. But… you had me dead to rights. My mind doesn’t turn off.” He drank deeply of his ice-diluted scotch. His attention went back to the screen, and left Maureen wondering if she’d been imagining things. Just how clever was John Baker?

The commercial mercifully ended and the cameras zoomed in on the Jet Propulsion Laboratories.

Harry Newcombe hastily chewed the last of his sandwich while he drove the mail truck with one hand. The regulations gave him time off for lunch, but Harry never took it. He used the time for better purposes.

It was long past noon when he got to Silver Valley Ranch. As usual he stopped at the gate. There was a spot where he could look through a pass in the foothills to the majesty of the High Sierra to the east. Snow gleamed off their tops. To the west were more foothills, the sun not too far above them. Finally he got out to open the gate, drove through, and carefully closed the gate behind him. He ignored the large mailbox on its post beside the gate.

He stopped along the drive to pick a pomegranate from the grove that had started as one tree and was still, untended, propagating itself downhill toward the stream. Harry had seen it grow in the half-year he’d been on the route, and was guessing when the pomegranates would roll all the way downhill into the cocklebur patch. Would they choke out the burrs? He had no idea, really. Harry was a city boy.

Harry was an ex-city boy. Hah! And if he never saw a city again he’d be happy.

He was grinning as he shouldered his load and walked lopsided to the door. Rang. Set the bag down.

The dimly heard hurricane of a vacuum cleaner calmed. Mrs. Cox opened the door and smiled at the bulging bag beside Harry. “That day again? Hello, Harry.”

“Hi. Happy Trash Day, Mrs. Cox!”

“And a Happy Trash Day to you too, Harry. Coffee?”

“Don’t stay me. It’s against guv’mint regulations.”

“Fresh coffee. And new-baked rolls.”

“Well… I can’t resist that.” He reached into the smaller pouch that still hung at his side. “Letter from your sister in Idaho. And something from the Senator.” He handed her the letters, then shouldered the bag and wobbled in. “Anyplace special?”

“The dining table’s big enough.”

Harry spilled the contents of the larger bag across a polished table of lovely grain. It seemed to have been carved out of a slice of a single tree, and must have been fifty years old. They didn’t make tables like that anymore. If there was furniture like that in the caretaker’s home, what must it be like in the big house up the hill?

The wood grain was hidden under a deluge: begging letters from charities, from several political parties, from colleges. Offers to join lotteries by buying records, clothing, books, subscriptions to magazines. “YOU MAY ALREADY HAVE WON $100 A WEEK FOR LIFE!” Religious tracts. Political lessons. Single-tax literature. Free samples of soap, mouthwash, detergent, deodorant.

Alice Cox brought in the coffee. She was only eleven, but she was already beautiful. Long blonde hair. Blue eyes. A trusting girl, as Harry knew from seeing her when he was off duty. But she could be trusting here; nobody was going to bother her. Most of the men in Silver Valley kept rifles slung on racks in their pickups, and they damned well knew what to do with anybody who’d bother an eleven-year-old girl.