CHAPTER VIIINorma missed Herb. There was the glamor of the unknown about him and the appeal of the familiar. He was two individuals, a little boy, confused and puzzled and mute and needing her, and a man, strong and wise and belonging to a strange world she could not enter as she had entered all too easily the masculine world of Earth.
She was with Frank when Bud made his television announcement.
Bud beamed happily in the glare of uncounted millions of dollars of publicity. “At my invitation,” he said, “the starmen have consented to return.”
Frank winced to see what he thought to be a decent cause advancing the personal fortunes of a fool, a hypocrite, and a coward.
Bud—it was a little difficult to imagine (without having heard it) how he managed it—at the high point of his speech inse
