 Why did Lt. Britton laugh at Major Banes' anxiety?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1954. One thousand seventy-five miles above the wrinkled surface of Earth, a woman was in pain. There, high in the emptiness of space, Space Station One swung in its orbit. Once every two hours, the artificial satellite looped completely around the planet, watching what went on below. Outside its bright steel hull was the silence of the interplanetary vacuum; inside, in the hospital ward, Lieutenant Alice Britton clutched at the sheets of her bed in pain, then relaxed as it faded away. Major Banes was all smiles and cheer now, but he hadn't been that way five months ago. Your husband may be the finest rocket jockey in the Space Service, but that doesn't give him the right to come blasting up here on a supply rocket just to get you pregnant!" "Lieutenant Britton, it is my personal opinion that you need your head examined, and not by a general practitioner, either! The terrible pressure of a rocket landing would increase her effective body weight to nearly half a ton; an adult human being couldn't take that sort of punishment for long, much less the tiny life that was growing within her. And then, only half an hour ago, a meteor had hit the radar room. The self-sealing walls had closed the tiny hole quickly, but even in that short time, a lot of air had gone whistling out into the vacuum of space.
 She didn't think his worries were an actual problem
 The British accent he used as a coping mechanism sounded ridiculous  He had forgotten to order the simplest of supplies  She didn't think his worries were an actual problem  She already had the equipment he thought he was missing