"You're properly installed, commander," she told him. "But if I don't hurry, I'll be un-installed by my boss. I've got to run along. Keep rising, Guy!"
And with that she was gone.
Guy looked at the empty box, and then at the comets on his lapels.
And from them, across to the Orionad.
And a challenge arose to confront him. He would be sector marshal one day, and whether he took his patrol marshal's insignia to Laura Greggor depended only upon her. And he would also command the Orionad.
He clenched his fist upon the empty box, crushing it. His question was not: Would he command the Orionad? It was: How long would it take?
It took five years. Five long, toilsome years.
But five years of constantly increasing, constantly expanding, constantly improving. He never forgot the day of the Orionad's landing in all that five years, though there was evidence that Laura Greggor had been reprimanded by Malcolm Greggor for her actions. But Maynard remembered, and it was Joan Forbes that pinned the silver nebula on his lapels—in public as befitted a Patrol Marshal—just before he stepped aboard the Orionad to take his first major command.
He hoped that Laura Greggor remembered.