"What of you—of me—. What does this mean to us—to people?"
Again the young spaceman hesitated. "We ... we don't know, yet. We think that time won't have the same meaning to everyone...."
"... When you travel faster than light. Is that it?"
"Well ... yes. Something like that."
"And I'll be—old—or dead, when you get back? If you get back?"
Robert leaned forward and buried his face in the silvery-blonde hair which swept down over Ninon's shoulders.
"Don't say it, darling," he murmured.
This time Ninon permitted herself a wrinkling smile. If she was right, and she knew she was, it could make no difference now. There would be no wrinkles—there would be only the soft flexible skin, naturally soft and flexible, of real youth.
She reached behind her, over the end of the couch, and pushed three buttons. The light, already soft, dimmed slowly to the faintest of glows; a suave, perfumed dusk as precisely calculated as was the exact rate at which she let all resistance ebb from her body.
Robert's voice was muffled through her hair. "What were those clicks?" he asked.