It wasn't that Pete Cooper didn't love his wives, or that he wanted to see them hurry on into the next world. He always felt real grief when he found himself a widower. But a man must be practical. They were all healthy young women, or at least middle aged when he married them, good insurance risks, and no insurance agent was turning down the business when Pete asked for a policy that big, especially when Pete was putting the cash on the line to pay up the policy when he bought it.
That was the most sensible way for a man in the interstellar service to invest his money, Pete said. When he was out in space traveling at near light speed, and time slowed almost to a stop for him, the few months he spent on an expedition meant that nine years passed for a wife on Earth for a Centauri trip, and Sirius meant fifteen, and Altair twenty-five. So a man only saw his wife two or three times between trips, and maybe the last time he saw her he had to take her to the old ladies' home, and the next time he pulled............