score. She would be half-consciously looking for me to "do something," even though she knew there was nothing I could do that she couldn't handle just as well.

Damn the guy that decided to implant that tendency in the younger crew members!

I wished there was something I could do to reassure her enough to nullify the effect, but there was nothing. She knew the score.

She knew that mechanically we would either make it or not make it.

She knew that it was psychologically impossible for two people conditioned to married life in space to continue to exist in sanity in any other relationship.

"Recombination" had been pounded into us since we first began training.

We were lucky in a way. There was only one possible recombination.

Yeah, lucky.

Helene Donnelly was a good kid, the best. But she was just that. A kid. If we didn't make it, she'd never live to be old enough to vote. She'd been in training since she was fourteen.

I'm almost thirty-five. I don't look it—space doesn't age you that way—but it's all there.

I could have recombined with Belle Leonard. It would have been awkward, but I could have done it. Helene could have recombined with Ed Travis without too much trouble.

But this way—

If we didn't make an honest recombination soon—not just a going through of motions—all the training and conditioning in the Solar System wouldn't be able to prevent us from feeling the terrible sense of loss that normally comes with the death of a loved one.

I was beginning to feel it already.

Helene spoke once while we poked through the wreckage the next "day."

She said: "I've found the rest of the welding torch. It works." She didn't have to. I could see the cloud of steam from half a mile away.

When we returned to the tractor she took off her helmet and went through the motions without any hesitation, but obviously without feeling any more than I did—just the slightly damp contact of cold lips.

"I'm not tired," she said, "I'll start driving." She put on 

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