"Don't talk to me," she said scornfully. Fire danced in her eyes. The fresh wind sent her hair, the flimsy gown, flying in the wind. "I told you I loved you once."
"I don't even know you," he protested. "Why have you chosen me?"
Her voice was steady now. Steady and like a whip lash.
"Because I knew you from the time you entered the patrol as a boy," she said. "I worshipped you from afar, and I know of everything you did. I talked to my father every day, sometimes more often than that. He thought the planet system would have fallen apart if you hadn't been here to steady it."
Her father?
"You seem determined to punish me," he said unsteadily. He could hear the ambulance car rocketing across the field now. They were coming for Jerry.
"I'll go on punishing you," she said. "If it hadn't been for you, Dad wouldn't be dead now, laying over there in that ship."
Dad? Jerry Graham?
"You're not...?"
Her nod was barely discernible.