"Aw, Whit, you know I can't. You know they made me promise that before I took the job."

"Promise to be a talking floozy to fifty men in space, to hold 'em all at arm's length, let 'em love you, then leave 'em in the cold when they came back down to earth. They made you promise to keep us stringing along, until we got back home safe and sound, then turn us loose with our love for you burning a hole in our hearts! They made you promise a thing like that, Suzy?

"You can't handle the merchandise, Whit. When you come down, then we'll talk over things together."

"Suzy, I love you, I love you!"

"I mustn't say that I love you too, Whit. They made me promise that I wouldn't say that. But Whit, you're awful nice."

Whit sat silent, and Suzy kept on talking. She could always talk. No matter what you said to her, no matter how you felt, no matter where you were, Suzy could always talk to you and make your life seem brighter, and the trip back home again worth fighting to make. You fell in love with Suzy, they all did, but as she always said, they made her promise not to say she loved you back. Not until you got back home, safe and sound and sane.

That was Suzy's job on earth, in a drab little office with an engineer who controlled her channels, and sometimes blushed at what he heard go out over them. She spoke, sometimes gaily, sometimes gently, sometimes with all the frail strength of her body, into a microphone beamed to each capsule in turn, and in those capsules were men, who, but for her, would go mad before their time was up.

And Suzy never cheated, and she never lied, and she never changed. She was the love light of outer space, she and a dozen others at Point Magu. She kept men sane, and she brought them home, and she kept her promise never to love and never to marry until they came back again.

"Whit? What we were talking about yesterday. Did you think about that?"

"You mean about the gardenias?"

"Umhummm. My gardenias, to pin on my blouse."

"Suzy, I'll bring you a thousand, one each day, until you say you love me. I'm drawing them now, on paper, one every day, for you."

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