I was no longer listening. There was something I had left unfinished and it suddenly seemed more important to me than anything a frog could say or do.
Going down in the jacket-lift to Sylvia I kept trying to recall just how I felt when it had cheated me out of something I was entitled to.
It didn't seem right to leave a kiss dangling in midair, and I was sure that Sylvia was feeling frustrated, too.
She was. She came into my arms in utter silence, and we did the kiss up brown, and stored it away in our memories for when we were eighty-eight.
"Darling," she said. "I'm glad we thought of that."
I felt better almost at once. They had sent me out from Earth with a pat on the back and a commission, and I was returning with the commander's niece in my arms and a story in my brain which the news syndicates would certainly want.
I'd ask a good price for it. Lunar honeymoons were expensive, and although Sylvia wasn't extravagant she liked orchids as well as the next girl and was just the right height to wear sables with grace.