I was awakened by Pat.

"Tom... answer me, Tom. Can you hear me, Tom? An- ("Hey, Pat, I'm here!") I was wide awake, out of bed and standing on the floor plates, so excited I could hardly talk.

"Tom! Oh, Tom! It's good to hear you, boy-it's been two years since I was last able to raise you."

("But—") I started to argue, then shut up. It had been less than a week to me. But I would have to look at the Greenwich calendar and a check with the computation office before I could even guess how long it had been for Pat.

"Let me talk, Tom, 1 can't keep this up long. They've had me under deep hypnosis and drugs for the past six weeks and it has taken me this long to get in touch with you. They don't dare keep me under much longer."

("You mean they've got you hypped right now?")

"Of course, or I couldn't talk to you at all. Now—" His voice faded out for a second "Sorry. They had to stop to give me another shot and an intravenous feeding. Now listen and record this schedule: Van Houten—" He reeled off precise Greenwich times and dates, to the second, for each of us, and faded out while I was reading them back. I caught a "So long" that went up in pitch, then there was silence.

I pulled on pants before I went to wake the Captain but I did not stop for shoes. Then everybody was up and all the daytime lights were turned on even though it was officially night and Mama O'Toole was making coffee and everybody was talking. The relativists were elbowing each other in the computation room and Janet Meers was working out ship's time for Bernie van Houten's appointment with his twin without bothering to put it through the computer because he was first on the list.

Van failed to link with his brother and everybody got jittery and Janet Meers was in tears because somebody suggested that she had made a mistake in the relative times, working it in her head; But Dr. Babcock himself pushed her solution through the computer and checked her to nine decimals. Then he announced in a chilly tone that he would thank everyone not to criticize his staff thereafter; that was his privilege.

Gloria linked with her sister right after that and everybody felt better. The Captain sent a dispatch to the flagship through Miss Gamma and got an answer back that two other ships were back in contact, the Nautilus and the Cristoforo Colombo.

There was no more straggling up to relieve the watch and stopping to grab a bite as we passed the pantry. If the recomputed time said your opposite number would be ready to transmit at 3:17:06 and a short tick, ship's time, you were waiting for him from three o'clock on and no nonsense, with the recorder rolling and the mike in front of your lips. It was easy for us in the ship, but each one of us knew that his telepair was having to undergo both hypnosis and drastic drugging to stay with us at all—Dr. Devereaux did not seem happy about it.

Nor was there any time for idle chit-chat, not with your twin having to chop maybe an hour out of his life for each word. You recorded what he sent, right the first time and no fumbles; then you transmitted what the Captain had initialed. If that left a few moments to talk, all right. Usually it did not ... which was how I got mixed up about Pat's marriage.

You see, the two weeks bracketing our change-over from boost to deceleration, during which time we reached our peak speed, amounted to about ten years Earthside. That's 250 to 1 on the average. But it wasn't all average; at the middle of that period the slippage was much greater, I asked Mr. O'Toole what the maximum was and he just shook his head. There was no way to measure it, he told me, and the probable errors were larger than the infinitesimal values he was working with.

"Let's put it this way," he finished. "I'm glad there is no hay fever in this ship, because one hard sneeze would push us over the edge."

He was joking, for, as Janet Meers pointed out, as our speed approached the speed of light, our mass approached infinity.

But we fell out of phase again for a whole day.

At the end of one of those peak "watches" (they were never more than a couple of minutes long, S-time) Pat told me that he and Maudie were going to get married. Then he was gone before I could congratulate him. I started to tell him that I thought Maudie was a little young and wasn't he rushing things and missed my chance. He was off our band.

I was not exactly jealous. I examined myself and decided that I was not when I found out that I could not remember what Maudie looked like. Oh, I knew what she looked like—blonde, and a little snub nose with a tendency to get freckles across it in the summertime. But I couldn't call up her face the way I could Pru's face, or Janet's. All I felt was a little left out of things.

I did remember to check on the Greenwich, getting Janet to relate it back to the exact time of my last watch. Then I saw that I bad been foolish to criticize. Pat was twenty-three and Maudie was twenty-one, almost twenty-two.

I did manage to say, "Congratulations," on my next linkage but Pat did not have a chance to answer. Instead he answered on the next. "Thanks for the congratulations. We've named her after Mother but I think she is going to look like Maudie."

This flabbergasted me. I had to ask for Janet's help again and found that everything was all right—I mean, when a couple has been married two years a baby girl is hardly a surprise, is it? Except to me.

All in all, I had to make quite a few readjustments those two weeks. At the beginning Pat and I were the same age, except for an inconsequential slippage. At the end of that period (I figure the end as being the time when it was no longer necessary to use extreme measures to let us telepairs talk) my twin was more than eleven years older than I was and had a daughter seven years old.

I stopped thinking about Maudie as a girl, certainly not as one I had been sweet on. I decided that she was probably getting fat and sloppy and very, very domestic—she never could resist that second chocolate éclair. As a matter of fact; Pat and I had grown very far apart, for we had little in common now. The minor gossip of the ship, so important to me, bored him; on the other hand, I couldn't get excited about his flexible construction units and penalty dates. We still telecommunicated satisfactorily but it was like two strangers using a telephone. I was sorry, for I had grown to like him before he slipped away from me.

But I did want to see my niece. Knowing Sugar Pie had taught me that baby girls are more fun than puppies and even cuter than kittens. I remembered the idea I had had about Sugar Pie and braced Dusty on the subject.

He agreed to do it; Dusty can't turn down a chance to show how well he can draw. Besides, he had mellowed, for him; he no longer snarled when you tried to pet him even though it might be years before he would learn to sit up and beg.

Dusty turned out a beautiful picture. All Baby Molly lacked was little wings to make her a cherub. I could see a resemblance to myself—to her father, that is. "Dusty, this is a beautiful picture. Is it a good likeness?"

He bristled. "How should I know? But if there is a micron's s difference, or a shade or tone off that you could pick up with a spectrophotometer, from the pic your brother mailed to my brother, I'll eat it! But how do I know bow the proud parents had the thing prettied up?"

"Sorry, sorry! It's a swell picture. I wish there were some way I could pay you."

"Don't stay awake nights; I'll think of something. My services come high."

I took down my pic of Lucille LaVonne and put Molly in her place. I didn't throw away the one of Lucille, though.