wonderful!"

It sure was. We went back to it again.

It's been a long time, now. Seven years. And if I haven't proved you can fall in love with the same woman twice I've been living a lie. But I know that it isn't so. If I was living a lie, Tow Tow would be unhappy, and he'd be filling the house with mirages. But my five-year-old son, Bobby, isn't a mirage, and neither is the girl I married.

Sometimes, when I see the lights of the skyport through a cornerset window, and winds howl in from the bay, I get to wondering about Pete.

You see, he never came in that night, never joined us! He may have looked in through a window, and realized I'd reached my last "port o' call," a quiet harbor in a storm that had died away forever. He may have turned and gone stumbling off into the night!

I'll never know, of course. Good old Pete! Sometimes I get to thinking. A mirage pup can coil up in an old ship and hibernate for a century. Could a human being do that?

There are strange influences in deep space. Are there discharges in the electromagnetic field that could slow up the metabolism of a tired little character like Pete?

That's nonsense, of course.

I'll have to go now. Bobby's calling me. He's standing at the head of the stairs, in his pajamas, and he's waiting for me to tell him a bedtime story about what it's like out in the mighty dark.

"Pop, you promised! Aw, come on, Pop—"

I'll have to keep it simple, of course. But maybe tonight I'll tell him about Pete.

Maybe when he grows up he'll meet Pete.

Who knows?

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