lar answer. Of course, by now I always
had a kind of a sense or feeling of what was going on. This time there
was a feeling of a celebration, rejoicing, everybody on a holiday.
Which was exactly the way I felt as I looked at the girl. No
objections? Then why ask questions?

"Julia," old Henry Schnable was saying, "this is Mr. John Barth. John,
this is--John! John, remember----"

I had reached out and taken the girl's hand. I tucked her arm in mine
and she looked up at me with the light, the fire in the green depths
swimming toward the surface. I didn't know what she saw in me--neither
of us knew then--but the light was there, glowing. We walked together
out of Henry Schnable's office.

"John! Julia, your papers! You have to sign----"

Business? We had business elsewhere, she and I.

"Where?" I asked her in the elevator. It was the first word either of
us had spoken.

"My apartment," she said in a voice like a husky torch song. "It's
close. The girl who rooms with me is spending the week back home with
her folks. The show she was in closed. We can be alone."

We could. Five minutes in a cab and we were.

I never experienced anything remotely like it in all my life. I never
will again.

And then there was the time afterwards, and then we knew.

It was late afternoon, turning to dusk. She lifted up on one elbow
and half turned away from me to switch on the bedside lamp. The
light came on and I looked down at her, lovingly, admiringly. Idly,
I started to ask her, "How did you get those little scars on your
leg there and ... those little scars? Like buckshot! Julia! Once,
along about ten years ago--you must have been a little girl then--in
the mountains--sure. You were hit by a meteor, weren't you??"

She turned and stared at me. I pointed at my own little pockmark scars.

"A meteor--about ten years ago!"

"Oh!"

"I knew it. You were."

"'Some damn fool, crazy hunter,' was what Pop said. He thought it
really was buckshot. So did I, at first. We all did. Of course about
six months later I found out what it was but we--my little people and
I--agreed there was no sense in my telling anyone. But you know."

It was the other ship. There were two in this sector, each controlled
to colonize a person. My own group always hoped and believed the other
ship might have landed safely. And now they knew.

We lay there, she and I, and we both checked internal communications.
They were confused, not clear and precise