"It was a lucky shot," Jensen allowed.
"Yeah, lucky that you missed. Otherwise I'd be dead and you'd be a brain floating in a tank, going insane from the lack of outside stimuli. Look, Perry, it happens to everyone. You'll shake it off when you realize you're not actually an inhuman monster, you're just trying to wrap your brain around a totally fucked-up situation. For seventy-five years you lead the sort of life where the most exciting thing that happens is you get laid from time to time, and the next thing you know you're trying to blast space octopi with an Empee before they kill you first. Christ. It's the ones that don't eventually lose it that I don't trust."
"Alan hasn't lost it," I said. "And he's been in as long as I have."
"That's true," Keyes said. "What's your answer to that, Rosenthal?"
"I'm a seething cauldron of disconnected rage on the inside, Lieutenant."
"Ah, repression," Keyes said. "Excellent. Try to avoid taking a potshot at me when you finally blow, please."
"I can't promise anything, sir," Alan said.
"You know what worked for me," said Aimee Weber, another squad leader. "I made a list of the things that I missed about Earth. It was sort of depressing, but on the other hand, it reminded me that I wasn't totally out of it. If you miss things, you're still connected."
"So what did you miss?" I asked.
"Shakespeare in the Park, for one," she said. "My last night on Earth, I saw a production of Macbeth that was just perfection. God, that was great. And it's not like we're getting any good live theater around these here parts."
"I miss my daughter's chocolate chip cookies," said Jensen.
"You can get chocolate chip cookies on the Modesto," Keyes said. "Damn fine ones."
"They're not as good as my daughter's. The secret is molasses."
"That sounds disgusting," Keyes said. "I hate molasses."
"Good thing I didn't know that when I shot at you," Jensen said. "I wouldn't have missed."
"I miss swimming," said Greg Ridley. "I used to swim in the river next to my property in Tennessee. Cold as hell most of the time, but I liked it that way."
"Roller coasters," said Keyes. "Big ones that made you feel like your intestines would drop out through your shoes."
"Books," said Alan. "A big fat hardcover on a Sunday morning."
"Well, Perry?" Weber said. "Anything you're missing right about now?"
I shrugged. "Only one thing," I said.
"It can't be any stupider than missing roller coasters," Keyes said. "Out with it. That's an order."
"The only thing I really miss is being married," I said. "I miss sitting around with my wife, just talking or reading together or whatever."
This got utter silence. "That's a new one on me," Ridley said.
"Shit, I don't miss that," Jensen said. "The last twenty years of my marriage were nothing to write home about."
I looked around. "Don't any of you have spouses who joined up? Don't you keep in touch with them?"
"My husband signed up before I did," Weber said. "He was already dead by the time I got my first posting."
"My wife is stationed on the Boise," Keyes said. "She drops me a note occasionally. I don't really get the feeling she's missing me terribly. I guess thirty-eight years of me was enough."
"People get out here and they don't really want to be in their old lives anymore," Jensen said. "Sure, we miss the little things—like Aimee says, that's one of the ways you keep yourself from going nuts. But it's like being taken back in time, to just before you made all the choices that gave you the life you had. If you could go back, why would you make the same choices? You already lived that life. My last comment aside, I don't regret the choices I made. But I'm not in a rush to make those same choices again. My wife's out here, sure. But she's happy to live her new life without me. And, I must say, I'm not in a hurry to sign up on that tour of duty again, either."
"This isn't cheering me up, people," I said.
"What is it about being married you miss?" Alan asked.
"Well, I miss my wife, you know," I said. "But I also miss the feeling of, I don't know, comfort. The sense you're where you're supposed to be, with someone you're supposed to be with. I sure as hell don't feel that out here. We go places that we have to fight for, with people who might be dead the next day or the day after that. No offense."
"None taken," Keyes said.
"There's no stable ground out here," I said. "There's nothing out here I feel really safe about. My marriage had its ups and downs like anyone's, but when it came down to it, I knew it was solid. I miss that sort of security, and that sort of connection with someone. Part of what makes us human is what we mean to other people, and what people mean to us. I miss meaning something to someone, having that part of being human. That's what I miss about marriage."
More silence. "Well, hell, Perry," Ridley finally said. "When you put it that way, I miss being married, too."
Jensen snorted. "I don't. You keep missing being married, Perry. I'll keep missing my daughter's cookies."