He rolled the softball toward the chicken-wire dugout in back of first base. He’d been an outfielder when he played for money, but he couldn’t cover the ground out there any more, either, so nowadays he played first. He could still catch and he could still throw.

A couple of guys from the other team came over and shook his hand. They’d been playing just for the fun of playing. He’d had fun, too-he wouldn’t have put on spikes if he didn’t have fun-but he’d gone out there to win. Playing for money for all those years had ingrained that in him.

Up in the wooden bleachers behind the wire fence, Barbara clapped her hands along with the other wives and girlfriends. Sam doffed his cap and bowed. His wife made a face at him. That wasn’t why he put the cap back on in a hurry, though. He was getting thin on top, and Southern California summer sunshine was no joke. He’d sunburned his scalp a couple of times, but he intended never, ever, to do it again.

“Head for Jose’s!” Win or lose, that cry rang out after a game. Winning would make the tacos and beer even better. Sam and Barbara piled into their Buick and drove over to the restaurant. It was only a few blocks from the park.

The Buick ran smoothly and quietly. Like more and more cars every year, it burned hydrogen, not gasoline-technology borrowed from the Lizards. Sam coughed when he got stuck behind an old gas-burner that poured out great gray clouds of stinking exhaust. “Ought to be a law against those miserable things,” he complained.

Barbara nodded. “They’ve outlived their usefulness, that’s certain.” She spoke with the precision of someone who’d done graduate work in English. Yeager minded his p’s and q’s more closely than he would have had he not been married to someone like her.