time to see a tridim together, since there is not much else in the way of extracurricular diversion at Tech. It was a very slight intimacy, but it meant a good deal to me, and I believed that it did to Betty too. She was always pleased to have me around, and she crinkled her nose at my jokes in a special way that she did for no one else's, and my jokes were not much better than the average, either.

It was a long time before I tried to tell her about the way I felt. It was not until the three years at Tech were over and the Institute was letting down its hair to the extent of sealing our brow with the traditional farewell party for graduates known as the Blastoff.

By the time I got there the revelry had already started. I made a couple of passes at the punch bowl and looked around for Betty. She was out on the floor; I pried her loose from the Joe who was trying to dance with her, and we made one eccentric ellipse around the hall and headed for the terrace. It was cool out there, the unostentatious coolness of an early summer evening that has not quite forgotten the heat of the day, and there was a bright wash of moonlight on the bay beyond the lights of the town. There was a lot of stardust around.

Betty must have seen it too. She turned toward me, and the solemn look on her face and the way her shoulders glowed in the moonlight and the moonlight gleamed in her hair was enough to make your breath come short. My breath, at least. It came right up in my throat and stuck there, and I reached out and we sort of melted together. It was the first time that had happened. That's how hard they work you at Tech.

After a little while we separated and I opened my eyes and they still worked well enough for me to see a bench not far away and we walked over and sat down.

Betty sighed and leaned toward me and I moved my arm out of the way to make room. The skin of her shoulder was smooth to my hand, and cool the way the evening air was cool.

"It's been fun, Tom, hasn't it?" I knew she meant the last three years and not just the last three minutes.

"Lots of work and lots of fun," I agreed. "That's why space work gets in your blood, I think. It's fun even when it's hardest. My hitch in the Girdle even seems like fun now that it's over."

"I can see how planet work must be a thrill, even if I haven't ever been beyond the moon. I will be though—I'm going out with my uncle's Vesta expedition 

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