Joseph Farrell

“ On nice days, Pete sits in a rocking chair on the porch with the other old men. He doesn't bother to dye his hair any more and he reads now with a thick glass, complaining about the small type they use nowadays. The attendants laugh off his irritability, and some of the visitors who come to see the other old men don't mind listening to his stories about the interstellar service.
When it gets toward dusk, he looks into the sky sometimes as the stars appear. Centaurus isn't really there, not here in the northern hemisphere, but he looks anyway. Out there in space, his wife is doing a man's job. ”

“ That was the most sensible way for a man in the interstellar service to invest his money, Pete said. When he was out in space traveling at near light speed, and time slowed almost to a stop for him, the few months he spent on an expedition meant that nine years passed for a wife on Earth for a Centauri trip, and Sirius meant fifteen, and Altair twenty-five. So a man only saw his wife two or three times between trips, and maybe the last time he saw her he had to take her to the old ladies' home, and the next time he pulled into Earth the insurance company was waiting for him with a check. ”

“ Pete expected to need another policy before he left for his next trip. He felt unhappy about Sally's being gone, but a man mustn't give in to morbid self pity. And hadn't he heard somebody say that a man without a wife was like a spaceship without a motor? ”

“ But a man must be practical. They were all healthy young women, or at least middle aged when he married them, good insurance risks, and no insurance agent was turning down the business when Pete asked for a policy that big, especially when Pete was putting the cash on the line to pay up the policy when he bought it. ”

“ But mentally, he told himself, I'm a young man, even though I walked through this city five hundred years ago.
A young man in love.
They knew in this era how to make it nice for young people in love, if you could afford one of the better places. ”

“ Safer than stocks, and there was always the possibility that the loving wife might come to an accidental end, which would sadden him, but it meant a double indemnity payment. That sort of satisfied a man's natural desire to have a little speculation attached to his investment. ”