"Yes," pleaded Mrs. Hanford. "What is the alternative?"
"Eden, Tau Ceti. I'll arrange transportation under the migration act, and she'll be permitted two hundred pounds of gross." Scholar Ross smiled thinly. "You can diet a few pounds off and thus increase the net weight of your allowable possessions," he said. "But, on the other hand, if you diet down to rail-skinny no one will take a chance on you."
Gloria demanded belligerently, "What am I, a raffle prize?"
"Why, that's no better than white slavery!" cried her mother.
"Oh, come now!" said Scholar Ross. "Miss Hanford will receive a home and a hard-working husband on a fine new world with unlimited opportunities."
Gloria Hanford snorted. "The term, 'unlimited opportunity' is just the optimist's way of describing a situation that the pessimist would call, 'lack of modern conveniences.'"
"Well, Miss Hanford, you have your choice. One of three. Corrective therapy and marriage with Bertram Harrison; total re-orientation; or migration to Eden, Tau Ceti. I'll not ask for your decision now. Give me your answer within thirty days."
"You can't force me!"
"No. I can't. All I can do is to point out your three avenues of future travel—and then point out that I do have the means of making your life so very inconvenient that you'll have no recourse but to make your choice from among the three desirable possibilities. Desirable, I must admit, means that which is most favorable to the furtherance of domestic tranquility!"