"That is correct."

My tongue was dry; my hands wet.

"Alpha Centauri is four years, four months distant, measuring in light years. Therefore, in his travel, John Hastings lost three of those months, but when he turned his instrument backward, he was looking at light images which had started from the Earth long before he ever left it. He was looking at—"

"At ... what happened four years ago...." John Hastings had finished the sentence for me. He was looking at something as if it were the first sunrise he had ever known.

Speculation brought the amphitheatre to its feet. For the only time during the trial, the mob found its voice. Uncertainty, relief and surprise mingled, ebbed and flowed.

The voice called for attention. "Quiet, please, quiet. The information is correct," and the storm was over.

"Since the jury is thus far hung, we will leave the decision to the last, thirteenth talisman. We would like your vote, Juror Thirteen. How do you find?"

John looked at me. It was the first time since they had brought him in.

And I stretched my arms out toward him....

Who can say whether I was right or wrong? It is too delicate a thing to come out all white or all black. But I think that in order for a man to hate a woman so very much, it is also necessary for him to have loved her very much, too.

And sometimes, I wake up, shaking, in the night. I am thinking of what might have happened if I hadn't remembered that old discarded pannier, or the way Mother transplanted the blue hydrangea bush before she died, or how Dad swore when she made him throw that aneroid away. If I hadn't remembered those things, I would never have seen the look on John's face as he walked into my outstretched arms and said: "Is it time for us to go home now, Mary? Is it?"

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