They were to have two more visitors.
The first arrived on the Friday of their first week back.
Cassie.
She disembarked from the space shuttle Daedalus and came straight in from the dusty airfield. She walked into the visitors' lounge carrying a black duffel bag. She looked a little older but as beautiful as Mace had remembered her; her dark hair was pulled back in the same tidy bun; and she wore the black uniform of a commercial shuttle pilot.
He stood still, watching her from a distance, well across the room. Trey, standing with him, did too. Pilot was the first to acknowledge her: they faced one another and embarked on a classic windmilled parody of greeting, Cassie at first offering her hand while Pilot saluted, then Cassie saluting while Pilot reached out. Then Pilot simply grabbed her and hugged her, and Cassie, laughing, hugged her back.
Even from his distance and Trey's, Mace heard Pilot say: "'Though she be but little, she is fierce.'"
"Welcome home, you painted maypole," Cassie replied, squeezing her replacement, her much taller self.
Then Capa walked in.
Maybe he'd been right, Mace thought: that half-nuts gobbledegook Capa had spouted at them during their "university" days in the pod, when he spoke of black holes and event horizons and light bending while time slowed--
It was happening right now. That time-slowing thing.
Not for all of them. Not for Mace or Trey or Pilot. Just for Capa and
"Cassie," he said-- Capa said-- in that damned flat quiet android voice of his.
He'd spoken to Mace, the lying bastard had, of how they should behave toward Cassidy, should she for some reason-- after all, she wasn't family, was she?-- show up at the base. Propriety. Polite distance. Gracious formality.
All of which shattered now like a cinderblock through the window at Mace's back in the brunt of a full-facial-and-frontal collision between their Cassie and her Brainiac. Not the most graceful of embraces or the tidiest of kisses, to put it mildly-- at least one lip got nicked, and later they might have to ask the base medics to determine whose tonsils were whose-- but as Cassie stood there, after that first tenderly-- if dangerously-- messy kiss, wrapped in Capa's wiry arms, her head against Capa's bony shoulder, all Mace could think was That's how these things are supposed to work. About fucking time.
"You owe me five bucks," he said to Trey.
"Sorry: I left my wallet in my other pants."
"Dick." Mace grinned-- and then Cassie was looking his way, over Capa's shoulder. Her dark eyes were bright with tears; Mace, heading over, said: "Hey, Cass. Got any left for us?"
Capa, smiling, breathless, released her; Cassie flew into Mace, and he swept her up in his arms, clean off her feet.
"Mace." She stood there, breathing against him, looking up at his face. She reached up tentatively and touched his scarred left cheek, just below his eye patch. "How--?"
"Doesn't matter." He smiled at her. "The new one's gonna have x-ray vision."
A throat-clearing, a voice behind them: "In the meantime, maybe the lady would like to acknowledge the token Asian."
"Trey--" Cassie said.
Trey grinned broadly and received his hug. Then he asked Cassie: "Could I borrow five dollars?"
"What?" She looked at him bemusedly. "Why--?"
Mace caught Capa's eye. "'Cause he bet me you wouldn't get more than a handshake out of Brainiac, that's why."
Actually, they had two and a half more visitors. The half was a proxy of sorts, incorporeal. Shortly after Cassie's initial mauling in the visitors' lounge, Mace's father called from the moon, from Tranquility Base, to offer his formal congratulations on the success of Project Icarus. And to tell his son that he loved him.
Later, as Cassie's first day among them turned into evening, Mace caught her and Capa outside the dining room almost managing not to touch each other even as they almost managed not to gaze into each other's eyes-- Brainiac, you hypocritical little shit-- and said, managing absolutely to keep his face straight: "Don't be getting up to anything, you two. There are cameras in our rooms."
"I knew that," Capa replied evenly. His expression said otherwise. So did Cassie's.
"You are an evil man," Whitby said.
It was becoming easier to think of her as "Whitby." As "Loinnir," too. Mace lay beside her, nakedly and sweatily exhausted beneath their shared sheet, smiling dreamily up at the ceiling. "I know. Means he'll be sneaking over to the guest quarters tonight, is all."
"You know he won't."
"So they don't get any tonight. They'll survive. Leaves 'em more for later."
"Are you so certain there aren't cameras in these rooms?"
"Nope."
"Bastard."
Mace chuckled, rolled onto his side, kissed her. "Like you care."
Later that morning, their last visitor: Whitby's older brother.
He was a rangy, tall Scot with wild pepper-and-salt hair. Mace was there with Whitby when her brother Richard-- Richie-- arrived; there, Mace heard something that he knew he wasn't meant to hear, something that would haunt him in the coming days--
Whitby walked into a bearlike embrace from her brother the wildman. Then Richard Whitby stood with his forehead tipped to his sister's and asked gently: "Did you find him?"
"I did, Richie."
"Didn't go well, I take it."
"No."
"I am sorry, Annalee."
She swallowed. She started to say something, stopped. They stood for a moment, holding each other, not moving. Richard Whitby kissed his sister's forehead, again drew her close, rubbed her back. She closed her eyes and rested her head against his shoulder. Just as Mace was thinking he'd be more tactfully placed anywhere else on the base, she looked his way, tenderly and then just a touch wryly, and said: "Richie, this is Mace."