It was almost a class reunion, and though it was marked by joylessness, there was no reason as yet to think it would be marred by tragedy.

Edward Talliaferro, fresh from the Moon and without his gravity legs yet, met the other two in Stanley Kaunas’s room. Kaunas rose to greet him in a subdued manner. Battersley Ryger merely sat and nodded.

Talliaferro lowered his large body carefully to the couch, very aware of its unusual weight. He grimaced a little, his plump lips twisting inside the rim of hair that surrounded his mouth on lip, chin, and cheek.

They had seen one another earlier that day under more formal conditions. Now for the first time they were alone, and Talliaferro said, “This is a kind of occasion. We’re meeting for the first time in ten years. First time since graduation, in fact.”

Ryger’s nose twitched. It had been broken shortly before that same graduation and he had received his degree in astronomy with a bandage disfiguring his face. He said grumpily, “Anyone ordered champagne? Or something?”

Talliaferro said, “Come on! First big interplanetary astronomical convention in history is no place for glooming. And among friends, too!”

Kaunas said suddenly, “It’s Earth. It doesn’t feel right. I can’t get used to it.” He shook his head but his look of depression was not detachable. It remained.

Talliaferro said, “I know. I’m so heavy. It takes all the energy out of me. At that, you’re better off than I am, Kaunas. Mercurian gravity is 0.4 normal. On the Moon, it’s only 0.16.” He interrupted Ryger’s beginning of a sound by saying, “And on Ceres they use pseudo-grav fields adjusted to 0.8. You have no problems at all, Ryger.”

The Cerian astronomer looked annoyed, “It’s the open air. Going outside without a suit gets me.”

“Right,” agreed Kaunas, “and letting the sun beat down on you. Just letting it ”