‘Silver Drop' is returning from Epsilon Eridani and I'm on the intercept shuttle.  My daughter Marina is coming back to me, after a six-month absence which lasted only five weeks in her subjective time.  A simple escapade from her point of view.  « You're the one who should have gone, » she said, with all the smug superiority of a twelve-year-old, before walking up the runway. « You'd have come back in ten years and we could have got married. »  I never know if she's serious or not when she talks like that, and the wife who could have explained the mysterious ways of little girls for me has long since returned to the protein converter.  I settled for a brief smile.  The holo camera I'd given her for her birthday hung around her neck.  When she pointed it at me, I covered the lens with my hand.
After she left, I rejoined the volunteer environmental battalion, and headed for Earth.... I spent five straight months repairing the damage caused by an ecology gone mad, introducing new species, which had been bio-engineered in orbit, and burying the putrefied remains of the previous ones.  Apparently, the next generation will be partially biodegradable.  But in the meantime we had to dig in an unbelievably heavy gravity, while wearing oxygen filters and protective suits.  Planetary environments can be incredibly aggressive when you're not used to them.
Earth... Marina can't see why anyone would want to waste their time restoring ‘that old thing', as she calls it.  I dragged her along with me a couple of times.  She just couldn't get used to the horizon.  In the mining agglomerate where we hang our unit, above one of Saturn's poles, there are almost no openings to the outside.  No one's ever asked for any.  We contemplate the panoramic rings and the endless dark of space every time we go out to prospect.  And our leisure time is spent within four straight walls, blind, far from anything that could remind us of work.
Epsilon Eridani, was another matter. For twelve-year-olds, distant stars shine brighter.  I let Marina go.  My father did the same for me, once.  He also arranged to meet me here, right by Lagrange 2. The old, abandoned Lambini Station.
In the shuttle, the pungent taste of ozone tinges the air circulated by tireless machines.  From my look-out, opposite the panoramic bay, I look out at the sculptured crescent of the Moon and the minuscule spot where the station is.  All of the passengers have deserted this section to watch ‘Silver Drop' emerge.  Soon, space will split apart and the mono-crystalline wings of the ship will deploy to brake its acceleration, creating whirls of energy and flashes of colors from other worlds.  In the middle of all this activity, I might well miss Marina.  I prefer to wait here.  Looking at the station.  Listening to my heart beat as my internal clock starts to keep time with my daughter's.  Soon, we'll share the same second and both of us will live a little more than one life at a time.
She'll have changed more in five weeks than I have in six months.

[…] 

Translated by Sheryl Curtis