"I've been thinking about that name of yours. It seems to me I've heard it somewhere. Read it in a book.”
She glanced at him swiftly and then stared out into space.
"Perhaps you have," she said finally.
There was a silence, unbroken except by the humming of the geosectors.
The girl turned back to Gary, chin cupped in her hands. "Probably you have read about me;" she said. 'Perhaps the name of Caroline Martin is mentioned in your histories. You see, I was a member of the old Mars-Earth Research commission during the war with Jupiter. I was so proud of the appointment.
Just four years out of school and I was trying so hard to get a good job in some scientific research work. I wanted to earn money to go back to school again.”
"I'm beginning to remember now," said Gary, "but there must be something wrong. The histories say you were a traitor. They say you were condemned to death.”
"I was a traitor," she said and there was a thread of ancient bitterness in the words she spoke. "I refused to turn over a discovery I made, a discovery that would have won the war. It also would have wrecked the solar system. I told them so, but they were men at war. They were desperate men.
We were losing then.”
"We never did win, really," Gary told her.