Alicia, elaborately ignoring all that was past,
told Jamison that Babs and Cochrane were now an acknowledged romance and
actually had plans for marriage immediately the ship returned to Earth.
Jamison made the usual inept jests suited to such an occasion.
Presently they called the others to dinner. Jones and Johnny Simms were
long behind the others, and Jones' expression was conspicuously
dead-pan. Johnny Simms looked sulkily rebellious. His sulking had not
attracted attention in the control-room. He had meant to refuse sulkily
to come to dinner. But Jones wouldn't trust him--alone in the
control-room. Now he sat down, scowling, and ostentatiously refused to
eat, despite Alicia's coaxing. He snarled at her.
This, also, was not in the tradition of the behavior of voyagers of
space. They dined in the over-large saloon of a ship that had never been
meant really to leave the moon. The ship stood upright under strange
stars upon a stranger world, and all about it outside there were the
resting forms of thousands upon thousands of creatures like cattle. And
the dinner-table conversation was partly family-style jests about Babs'
and Cochrane's new romantic status, and partly about a television
broadcast which had to be ready for a certain number of Earth-hours yet
ahead.
Pages:
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260