mergency, however desperate--this quick-witted officer floundered in
embarrassment like any schoolboy, but continued, doggedly: "I'm afraid
that I gave myself away back there, but...."

"We gave ourselves away, you mean," she filled in the pause. "I did my
share, but I won't hold you to it if you don't want--but I _know_ that
you love me, Conway!"

"_Love_ you!" The man groaned, his face lined and hard, his whole body
rigid. "That doesn't half tell it, Clio. You don't need to hold me--I'm
held for life. There never was a woman who meant anything to me before,
and there never will be another. You're the only woman that ever
existed. It isn't that. Can't you see that it's impossible?"

"Of course I can't--it isn't impossible, at all." She released her
finger shields, four hands met and tightly clasped; and her low voice
thrilled with feeling as she went on: "You love me and I love you. That
is all that matters."

"I wish it were," Costigan returned bitterly, "but you don't know what
you'd be letting yourself in for. It's who and what you are and who and
what I am that's eating me. You, Clio Marsden, Curtis Marsden's
daughter. Nineteen years old. You think you've been places and done
things. You haven't. You haven't seen or done anything--you don't know
what it's all about. And who am I to love a girl like you? A homeless
space-flea who hasn't been on any planet three weeks in three years. A
hard-boiled egg. A trouble-shooter and a brawler by instinct and
training. A sp...." He bit off the word and went on quickly: "Why, you
don't know me at all, and there's a lot of me that you never _will_
know--that I can't let you know! You'd better lay off me, girl, while
you can. It'll be best for you, believe me."

"But I can't Conway, and neither can you," the girl answered softly, a
glorious light in her eyes. "It's too late for that. On the ship it was
just another of those things, but since then we've come really to know
each other, and we're sunk. The situation is out of control, and we both
know it--and neither of us would change it if we could, and you know
that, too. I don't know very much, I admit, but I do know what you
thought you'd have to keep from me, and I admire you all the more for
it. We all honor the Service, Conway dearest--it is only you men who
have made and are keeping the Three Planets fit places to live in--and I
know that Virgil Samms' chief lieutenant would have to be a man in four
thousand million...