Now and on Earth (23 page)
There was a dead silence.
Then Baldwin brought his open palm down on the desk and began choking and strangling on his cigarette. Reynolds reddened; but he grinned.
"I guess that's all, Mr. Moon. Thank you for coming in."
"Don't mention it," said Moon. And he strolled out, his hands swinging limply at his skinny shanks.
Baldwin wiped his eyes.
"I think it's pertinent to tell you that Moon is leaving us. He's been called back into the Navy. We could have had him deferred, but he wanted to go. So we didn't try to hold him. We tried to keep him from leaving once before, and it didn't work out so well."
"Very interesting." Reynolds got up and held out his hand to me. "We'll try to get together again under more pleasant circumstances."
I shook hands, not saying anything.
Baldwin said, "You'll get to see Dilly, all right. He'll be around. He's taking over Moon's job."
"Thought I'd say adios," he said, as I got in and sat down. "Would have brought you home, but I thought it might not be a good idea."
"You just about saved my neck," I said.
"Yeah? Well, I guess I owed you something, Dilly. How's Frankie?"
"She's going to be all right."
"I wish I could have done what I should have. I liked Frankie, Dilly. It wasn't just another one of those things."
"I know. I know how it is."
"Want a drink?"
"I guess not, Moon."
"I guess I don't either."
"I'm sorry you're leaving. I hope I'm-we're not the cause of it."
"I'd've probably gone anyway, Dilly. I've been looking for an excuse for a long time."
"You know I didn't want your job?" I said. "You know I'm not going back?"
"Don't let me keep you from it, Dilly."
"It isn't that."
He nodded. "I ought to've known you'd be too smart. You've got some good tricks, Dilly, but they wouldn't carry you there forever. And it would be all the harder on you afterwards."
"Yes, and that isn't all, Moon."
He waited.
"I don't know," I said. "Probably I'll never be able to explain to anyone. Not even if I wrote a book…"
This file was created with BookDesigner program
20/10/2007
LRS to LRF parser v.0.9; Mikhail Sharonov, 2006; msh-tools.com/ebook/