"Of course I will," Miriam said. She peered in the gloom, saw his tension and contented herself with patting his hand. "I'll resign as soon as school is out in June. We'll be married, and I'll look after things when Miss Filburn goes to her sister's. Is that the way you want it, Wesley?"
Wesley wondered if it was. The spring darkness below and beyond the inn was warm and alive, vibrant with the tantalizing nebulous promise that had led him on like a will-o-the-wisp all his life without once revealing itself. The romance of strange places never seen and never to be seen called powerfully, a tocsin so familiar that his response was as much nostalgia as longing.
His Aunt Jessica joined them on the verandah, saving any need of further talk unnecessary. He had an impression, instantly rejected as unworthy, that she had been listening behind the screen for the outcome of his proposal.
"It's all settled, Miss Filburn," Miriam said comfortably. "Wesley and I are going to be married in June."
The second brochure arrived next morning, again, coincidentally, with a letter from Wesley's agent. Terse as ever, the note said:
Great stuff; background so convincing I dammed nearly believed in it myself. Shoot me another.
Henry.
With it came a check that left Wesley faint with disbelief.
The second travelogue advertised a world vastly different from Aldhafera's utopia. The system was Alpha Geminorum, Castor—a visual binary subdivided into spectroscopic doubles, presenting a four-sun family revolving in pairs about itself, a cosmic madhouse that gave precarious shelter to only one inmate.