"Romm!" Alina turned, seeing him for the first time. "What are you doing here?"
"Got bored. Decided I needed a kiss."
"Well, come get it."
He did.
"Now," she said, "the truth. You don't come wandering down here at this time of day to neck. Out with it."
"I came to take you to lunch."
"At this hour? I don't usually take off this early."
"My darling Alina, I have something to tell you, and I am sure that you'll need something in your stomach to brace you when I tell it." Alina put her palms to her temples and looked at the ceiling.
"Oh, no! This is what comes of being a psych engineer! He comes in and makes a remark like that because he knows damned good and well that I would drop anything to find out what he's being so mysterious about!" She dropped her hands and looked back at Romm. "All right," she snarled in mock viciousness, "I'll come. But you can't get away with this forever!"
The Colonization Program Building filled better than a cubic mile of the city's space, housing every function of the operation that was taking man to the stars, trying to get the race of man there before the aliens beat them to it. The lift shaft took Parmay and his wife up to the top level, where the apartments and restaurants were. There, they could look out through the broad windows at the rolling meadows and forest that covered the city beneath.