Capa's sister was the first. Without her son and daughter (the project for now restricting the presence of children amongst those recently come home), without-- and, very likely, Capa found this more upsetting than the absence of his niece and nephew-- Capa's dog. But Capa was ecstatic. Mace could see it in the blue light spilling from his eyes. After a first embrace that seemed to last a geologic age, after muttered, shyly smiling introductions, their mission physicist and his sister Rosa settled themselves into a zone of placid calm. They wandered off, talking quietly, toward the rose garden behind the building where the Icarus survivors were quartered; Rosa herself would be staying on the base, at the project's invitation, for as long as she liked-- or, as she put it, drolly-- as long as friends back home, a married couple with kids of their own, could stand her terrible twosome.
Then, the next day:
Trey's parents, in from Hong Kong. Among the potted palms and bromeliads of the visitors' lounge they hugged and held him; they discreetly eyed his pinned-up empty sleeve and looked stoic through their happiness.
"Had to be done," Trey said, holding his mother with his remaining arm. "It's okay."
His father's face was very still. "Who did that to you, Edward?"
Trey glanced across the lounge to Whitby, who was standing near the ceiling-high windows and who, along with Mace, was conducting what was proving to be an unsuccessful experiment in invisibility. She flinched slightly; Trey smiled apologetically at her, over his mother's shoulder, and said: "She did."
Whitby held her ground as Mr. Trey approached. He looked at her critically; she looked back at him evenly. Then he held out his hand, and Whitby took it. His handshake was warm and firm.
"Thank you for our son," he said.
Corazon's husband arrived later that day. He spoke with Whitby, quietly, the two of them alone in the lounge as bluish dusk filled the high windows. Then he left again.
The hardest one came the next day.
Jean Harvey.
She'd be there within the hour, their tanned young mission adjunct informed them, as they sat at breakfast, the four of them and Rosa, too.
Stillness settled over the table. Capa stared into his oatmeal and set his spoon on a napkin and pushed the napkin away. A muscle twitched in his hollow cheek. He said: "I don't think I can talk to her, Mace."
"I'll do it, man. It's okay."
She was just over five feet of angel and spitfire. Amber-honey hair, wide blue eyes. He'd adored her, Harvey had. She looked a little dead now, a little lost in the open space of the lounge.
"Hey, Jeannie," Mace said, smiling.
She turned to him from the windows and walked into his arms without a sound. Mace held her and looked at the flowering desert beyond the windows, focusing hard on the rough gold and serge of the mountains to the west, so that when she started to cry he didn't cry, too. She held tight to him and shook quietly against him, and Mace did what any decent man would do and let her.
"Was it quick?"
"Yeah," he said.
A slight quavering in her voice, as though her heart were shaking just there, at the base of her throat. "Because I read the report they showed us, and it said that-- that-- But I have to ask you, Mace: did he suffer?"
"No. It was over like that. He didn't suffer."
She pulled away a bit; she nodded, not looking at him. Mace was glad of that. She hadn't heard the lie, or was gracious enough to pretend she hadn't; not looking at him, she couldn't see the tears in his good right eye. She didn't say "Good.": there was nothing good about it. Her husband was dead.
She said, finally: "Thank you for talking to me."
