"How anybody in their right mind...." he growled at her. "Listen, you've already been to Mars. You've seen it. What do you want to go to that miserable, dried-up hole again for?"
"Because ... because I was happy there," she said tremulously.
"What? With those miserable savages?" He slapped his euphoria pipe down on the table. "Ethel, will you listen to that?"
Joyce's mother, plump and round-shouldered and vague-eyed, was deep in her reclining chair, the miniature transviewer on her lap, watching a garden party in Rome.
"What is it, dear?" she asked unhappily.
"This crazy girl wants to take her vacation on Mars again."
"Well ... it is educational," Ethel said.
Harley made a wild, exasperated sound. "What do you know about it? You've never been there. It's a dried-up hole, I tell you. It's a slum—it's one great big slum. Just one decent hotel in the whole place, and that's only because some of our boys went out there and put it up for them."
"That awful hotel—" Joyce caught herself. Not an argument about this, please! There was trouble enough waiting for her. "I wouldn't stay at the hotel," she said quietly.
"What do you mean? Where would you stay?"