(Cover Paul Youll)
Publisher: SFBC (USA)
ISBN: 0-7394-6001-3
Publication Date: 2004
John Grimes: Rim Runner 2004
Novelete
Slowly Grimes awakened from his nightmare.
It had been so real, too real, and the worst part of it was always the deep sense of loss. There was that shocking contrast between the dreary life that he was living (in the dream) and the rich and full life that he somehow knew that he should be living. There was his wife—that drab, unimaginative woman with her irritating mannerisms—and that memory of somebody else, somebody whom he had never met, never would meet, somebody elegant and slim, somebody with whom he had far more in common than just the physical side of marriage, somebody who knew books and music and the visual arts and yet evinced a deep appreciation of the peculiar psychology of the spaceman.