"You're doing all right," said Sandy. She paused at the top of the ladder. "Finding this—" she waved her hand about her—"ought to put your name in the history books. Of course you'll be much disliked by people who intended to invent space travel themselves. But you're doing all right."
"I'm not thinking of that," said Burke. "I'm thinking of you. I was going to ask you to marry me. I didn't. If we live through this, will you?"
Sandy regarded him carefully in the dim light of the ship's interior, most of which came through the air-lock doors.
"There are some conditions," she said evenly. "I won't play second fiddle to an imaginary somebody behind a veil of dreamed-of leaves. I don't want to make conditions, Joe. But I couldn't stand your feeling that maybe in marrying me you'd give up your chance of finding her—whatever or whoever she is."
"But I wouldn't feel that way!" protested Burke.
"I'd believe you did," said Sandy. "And it would amount to the same thing. I think I made a mistake in coming along in the ship, Joe. If I weren't along you might have missed me. You might even—" she grimaced—"you might even have dreamed about me. But here I am. And I can't compete with somebody in a dream. I won't even try. I—I can't imagine marrying anybody else, but if I do get married I want to be the only girl my guy dreams about!"
She turned again to the ladder. Then said abruptly, "You didn't ask why Pam feels creepy, or where. There's a place up on the second gallery where there's a door that's still locked. Pam gets the shivers when she goes by it. I don't. The whole place is creepy, to me."
She went down the ladder. Minutes later Holmes and Keller arrived.
Holmes said curtly, "The machinery in the transmitter-room reached a change-point just now. Those red dots in that plastic plate apparently started the transmitter in the first place. When its calls were answered it changed the broadcast, adding a directional signal. Just before we started out from Earth the red sparks passed another place and changed the broadcast again. Now they've passed a third place. We were there when the machinery shifted all around on a signal from that thing which hovers close to the red sparks and watches them. The transmitter probably blasted out at four or five times its original volume. There must have been a hundred thousand kilowatts in it, at least. It looks serious. Whatever those red sparks represent must be close."
Keller nodded in agreement, frowning, then he and Holmes wearily prepared to turn in. But Burke was upset. He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep.