The Need for Better Regulation of Outer Space: A Collection of Stories
Pippa Goldschmidt
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: 1910449121
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
her. With her charcoal hair and sad, sad eyes, she’s about a million miles from being some vacuous blond bobby-soxer. ‘No! It’ll be great. Just pretend you’re back at high school and you’re on a date with the boy you had a crush on. The rest of the audience look like they’re high-school kids anyway,’ I try not to look too obviously at the audience around us. I can’t see any of Walter’s other men, but who knows? Perhaps they’re just better at the job than I am. ‘I never went on dates when I was
and my heart sinks. I scan the crowd but I can’t see anyone obvious from the bureau. I never can. She gestures behind her, ‘The others,’ she whispers theatrically. They look like typical students to me, round faces, shiny hair, shiny teeth. It’s amazing to me that so soon after the war has finished there are already young kids like these, who’ve seen nothing, and who don’t know what it all comes to, in the end. We take our seats near the back and wait. One of the students giggles and Hiroko
he smiles. Joe can’t avoid noticing how guileless his smile is, as if he’s genuinely enjoying this encounter. ‘I can do it by myself.’ ‘Sure, but it’ll be an adventure for me.’ ‘You’re easily pleased.’ In the boot room it takes him forever to get ready. ‘Want a hand?’ Joe offers as Smith tries to cram his feet into endless layers of socks. But Smith just keeps grinning, ‘Wow, this is so exciting!’ That’s when Joe realises, she left him for Smith because Smith’s happier. He’s just more fun
theatrically. In the pub he sips his first pint of English beer, trying not to wince at its tepidness. Perhaps in a cold climate like this they find lukewarm beer a comfort. He wonders what they drink in summer, what he himself will drink then, but he can’t imagine being here in warm weather, wearing his shirtsleeves rolled up, having finished the wretched experiment and started on his real work. One of the students is telling the others a story. This student, Robert thinks his name is Lubbock,
contrast, her shirt’s as white as a just-laundered lab coat. ‘Ah,’ says the Prof, and to the Gaffer’s mind he looks guilty, as if he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t have. ‘Good. Glad you’re here. This is –’ but the Prof mumbles and he doesn’t catch her name. She definitely isn’t a post-doc, it’s not that she’s too old for that, just different. As if she’s taken a meandering path through life to get to this point. He knows about that sort of path, he’s taken a slightly unusual one