Arna eyed him icily. "And why should we visit this clergyman?"
"Well," said Sy innocently, "the old guy's almost two hundred now, which is crowding the limit for his generation. And you know the Sur-Malic don't have any marriage cere—"
"Oh, you knobhead! Here you have the most critical job of anyone in the League, and—and—who said I was going to marry you, anyway?"
"I did," returned Sy promptly. "Remember? I've been telling you that since we were kids—and you never once denied it."
Arna made a sound that was partly a sob and partly a laugh. She shook her head unbelievingly. "With the fate of a galaxy depending on your abilities and judgment, you drag me across a thousand million miles of space to prate about marriage."
"Yes," admitted Sy, "but think of how far it might have been. If spatial distances were actually as great as the old astronomers used to think, before they learned that light slows down after it travels—"
There was no slightest chance that Arna's small hand would actually strike Sy. She knew the attempt was futile, but she tried her best—and uttered a rueful sound when the blow seemed to pass right through his cheek, while he apparently stood still, grinning. "Some day," she promised, "I'm going to shoot you in the back—just to see what happens."
"That sounds more like my cheerful little calc-bird," he said. "But let's wait till after we're married, huh?" They continued along the unpaved road.
"I think," Arna said levelly, "there will be no marriage. There will certainly be none for me until the completion of the unimportant, completely insignificant Operation Catskin—or," she finished sweetly, "have you given that any thought lately?"
Sy frowned. A small stone in the road suddenly sped along the ground and cracked against another; the other snapped away, rolled, slowed, reversed, shot backward and hit the first one. He spoke thoughtfully. "Yes, I've given it a great deal of thought. And there's going to be—uh—a slight change of plan. That's really why I needed you here, Arna."