She smiled in answer, a smile only slightly less awry. "You don't know me, Mr. Thorne. I'm Helen Thurland. A friend of mine, Nancy Bertrand, was once stewardess on your Venus-Titan run. She thought the world of you."
"Then I'm glad she didn't accompany you," Thorne rasped. He plunged raggedly up the slope toward the inviting shade of the floppy vegetable trees cresting the rise. "Get out of that sun, girl. It's hotter than you think."
In silent obedience she followed, but he turned at the top to lower at her. "Is Miss Bertrand at Vulhan City?" he demanded. "If she is, and you bring her here to look at ... at me...."
The girl looked down at the glittering sunlight on the sea. "Nancy isn't at the City."
He sighed gustily with relief. "I thought plenty of her myself," he admitted, slumping down against a thick tree-trunk. "The best I...." He paused; then looked out to sea himself, fingering his whiskers.
"The best stewardess you ever had," she completed. Taking off the huge, floppy hat affected by tourists in the Martian heat, she looked down thoughtfully at him.
"She's dead, you know."
He stiffened, "Nancy?"
"Yes. A meteor in the tubes, they said. And the pilot couldn't land anywhere but on Io—and not good even there. There weren't many left. She's buried there, by a little green lake. I went there first this spring. I—I wish I hadn't. And just now, when Mr. Atlee named you, I thought of a space-pilot who wouldn't have left those stones on Io. The best pilot International ever had."
His lean, dirty fingers wrung aimlessly together. His heel ploughed a recurrent furrow in the shadows. "That pilot is as dead—as Nancy. Poor little kid." He gnawed his lip. It would not do to go maudlin. Not now.