"And the longer we stay alive, the more chance there is that some ship will pick us up."

"Oh, no, there's no chance at all," he asserted cheerfully. "You know that as well as I do. No use deceiving yourself, my love."

That, he observed to himself, was the way of non-addicts. They couldn't look facts in the face. They had to cling to a blind and silly optimism which no facts justified.

He knew that there was no hope. He was able to review the facts calmly, judiciously, to see the inevitability of their dying—and to take pleasure even in that.

He reviewed them for her now. "Let us see, sweetheart, whether I've lost my ability to analyze a situation. We're here with our pretty little lighthouse in the middle of a group of asteroids between Mars and Earth. Ships have been wrecked here, and our task is to prevent further wrecks. The lighthouse sends out a standard high-frequency beam whose intensity and phase permit astrogators to estimate their distance and direction from us. Ordinarily, there's nothing for us to do. But on the rare occasions when the beam fails—"

"That will be the end."

"On those occasions," he continued, unruffled by her interruption, "I am supposed to leave my cosy little shelter, so thoughtfully equipped with all the comforts of Earth or Mars, and make repairs as rapidly as possible. Under the usual conditions, lighthousekeeping is a boring task. In fact, it has been known to drive people insane. That's why it's generally assigned to happily married couples like us, who are accustomed to living quietly, without excitement."

"And that," she added bitterly, "is why even happily married couples are usually relieved after one year."

"But, darling," he said, his tone cheerful, "you mustn't blame anyone. Who would have expected that a maverick meteor would come at us and displace us from our orbit? And who would have expected that the meteor would have collided first with the outer asteroids, and picked up a cargo of—those?"

He gestured toward the window, where a shadow had momentarily paused. By the light that shone through, he could see that the creature was relatively harmless-looking. It had what appeared to be a round, humorous face whose unhumorous intentions would be revealed only at the moment of the kill. The seeming face was actually featureless, for it was not a face at all. It had neither eyes, nor nose, nor mouth. The effect of features was 

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