The Captain chuckled. "I've been thinking about what Johnny said a
while back."
The Mate waited.
"You see that star, out there, Skippy? The bright one, there on the
left of the field? I've been watching her for years. Even thought up a
name for her. Mary Anne. It almost seems that if I could say something,
in just the right way, she could understand and answer me."
The Mate closed the book and placed it on the table. When the two of
them were alone, they sometimes talked of things that only friends can
talk of. He maintained an encouraging silence.
"I've been thinking, too," the Captain continued, "that when I get to
Earth, I can still see Mary Anne. If I know where to look, she'll be
there, just the same as always....
"There was old Grandfather John Turner (you remember how he used to
cuss the filters?) Remember how he talked of going Home. 'I won't live
to see it,' he would say. 'I won't be here then,' he would say. But
when he talked about it, it didn't seem to matter....
"It was the dream that mattered. A dream of everything that's
wonderful. It meant peace and beauty and rest. It meant something too
wonderful ever to happen.... For him, it was just a dream.
"Now that we can practically touch it, and see it, and feel it, I find
it a rather frightening thing. It makes me feel cold inside; it makes
my mouth get dry; it makes my hair prickle.
"Funny, how it gets me."
"I know what you mean," the Mate said.
"Maybe I've been afraid all along to admit that I wanted to go Home;
afraid that somehow wanting something so much like a dream would keep
me from ever getting it.
"But now that we're almost there, I've changed. Remember what Johnny
said, 'How would you like to sit on a porch and tell the kids how you
came back from the stars?'"