At first she thought she imagined it, but when she heard it a second time, she slowly turned around. She looked around and noticed that everyone had l...ft the room, everyone except him – the person occupying her thoughts every minute of every day. Automatically she turned red and dropped her head down to not look at him, but when nothing was said, she slowly raised her head her head to find him looking questionably, almost sympathetic, at her. She went to say something, anything, but he held up. But by then, I guess it was just too late. I was 54 that year: owner of the insurance firm my father in law had handed down, grandfather of two with a third on the way and – what I what I was most proud of at the time – a 2 handicap in golf and club champion four years running. When Millie told me about the lump that April, I dismissed it, told her she was just ‘going through the change.’ But as was usually the case, my assessment was anything but correct. ‘It’s cancer,’ I remember the doctor. She switched the oxygen generators to pure oxygen until the carbon dioxide was gone. The transponder activated automatically and sent its' coded message to the star base a couple light years away. A couple minutes later it flickered and stopped transmitting. We could only hope a signal got through, but it was doubtful and we were far enough away that we might run out of oxygen by the time they found us. The oxygen generators would last us a good four hours to maybe eight hours if we use the. ..A quick look through the staff room let me know there wasn"t likely tobe anything to salvage here, so I went back downstairs to finishchecking out the store proper. I paid special attention to the pharmacy,the canned goods aisle, and just in case, sporting goods for weapons,and I got enough supplies to load up a small backpack before I headedfor the broken door.I heard someone else come in before I could get there, so I dodgedbehind a shelf and tried to stay out of sight. I hadn't seen a lot.