"Mores baloney! You were just plain scared. Middle-aged scared. Look at you. You're soft and you're getting wrinkles. Do you think I was really attracted to you? Do you think that's why I kissed you? No, you fool. That wasn't the reason."
"Then you...."
"Wanted to make this point. Wanted to show you you're old, too old to enjoy the most obvious pleasures of a younger man's life. Twenty-five, Mr. Horner! That's the age! The age not of boyishness but of mature youth! Twenty-five! The perfect age for you, and you know it." She smiled at him. It was a deliberately sexy smile, a come-on, an invitation which Horner, under the circumstances, had to decline. "Are you convinced?" she said.
"That I'm not as young as I used to be? Of course."
She gave him a deliberately daughterly kiss, pecking at his temple with her soft warm lips. "Then you're ready to go to the observation room."
The observation room, thought Horner. Did he do the observing, or was he observed? He sighed. It was not a young man's way of expressing what Hugh Horner felt. He knew it was not. He said slowly, bleakly, "I'm ready for the observation room."
The girl did not even nod. She had known he would be ready all along.
It was a small, utterly bare room with three walls of dull gray metal and the fourth of dazzling floor-to-ceiling glass. On the other side of the glass was a similar room—except that it was furnished with a single bench running across its length.
Men were seated on the bench. Young men, apparently staring at Horner and his lovely companion.