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Unnumbered Episode #202: Sailor America's Day Off
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	I'm Eileen Pearcy, better known as Sailor America, star of stage and
screen.  Well, maybe not stage, but there was the manga, and . . . sorry. 
I've got this annoying habit of getting off topic, something Jen knows all
too well.  I've also got a habit of being almost as flamboyant as Sailor
Venus, though Lord knows I'm trying to rein it in.  But hey, we North
American senshi are a rare breed.

	Anyway, all Japan's raving about me and Jen since the incident.  The
Gemini incident, that's all I'm allowed to refer to it as at this point.  In
twenty years, the seals will be broken on the reports, and all the details
will come out, but for now, all most people know is that there was a
disturbance in time and space, and myself, Jen, and her Highness fixed it.

	But that's not what this is about.  This is about my day off. 
Serenity's birthday was June 30, and this year it came on a long weekend, so
I got a break from the routine.  So I took Jen out for the day, figuring
that we could use some time together.

	It all started this morning.  Why not?  Everything else does, right?

***

	I went through all the pleasantries.  You know:  eat, shower, shave
my legs.  I cut myself, and we had no bandages.  Thank God I've got a day
off; I don't have to wear that short skirt and betray that scar to the
world.  It'll fix right up, though.  Being a senshi does weird things to
your bodily functions, things you get used to after a few years.

	Now Jen's much more of a morning person than I am, so she kind of
led me by the nose as we went through the formalities of getting ready for
the day.  Not that I have a problem with that, you realize.  Breakfast was
at a slow, leisurely pace.  I had a cheese omelet, while Jen had her typical
fare of sunny-side ups and sausages, along with some toast and tea.  No, we
don't go for those Japanese deals in the morning.

	Anyway, I was enjoying my omelet, and Jen asked, with her mouth full
of sausage: "So, what do you have planned for today, Eileen?"

	I really didn't know.  Of course, I didn't tell her that.

	"Er . . . it depends.  What do you have planned?"  First rule of
public relations: turn the other guy's questions back on him.  Hopefully she
would just go along with whatever I said.

	"Well . . . " and here she paused in that little way she does, "I
was thinking that I might get some shopping done.  Sammy said something
about how she needs a new outfit."

	I chewed on that a moment.  Where had I heard that name before? 
"Sammy?  She was on Pleiades, right?"

	"Yes," she said.  I don't know why, but it always sends shivers down
my spine when she says that.  Damn, but I'm lucky to have her.  Very lucky. 
Maybe too lucky.  "She was a great officer.  Still is.  I think you'd like
her."

	"What's this?" I asked playfully.  "Trying to get rid of me?"

	"No," said Jen, "just pointing out that it might be fun to take her
out."

	"Yeah, that's what I was thinking."  I drained my Sailor America mug
and went to the machine to get another cup.  I just love coffee.  Jen
doesn't, though.  I can't see why; it's the best drink on earth.  "So, you
wanna give her a call or something?"

	"Sure!"  She reached over to the phone, which was on the wall
adjacent to the table.  "Yes, headquarters please."

	"Headquarters?" I asked, surprised.  Last time I checked, she was 
still a lieutenant.  "So she's up on the Moon?

	"Yes.  She's on some kind of assignment up there, something with
Sailor Mars."

	I scowled.  That's not uncommon when her name is mentioned.  "She
decided to spread the wealth and be snotty on the Moon, too?"

	"Eileen!" she protested.  

	"Sorry," I said, not really meaning it.  Sailor Mars and I have
never been exactly chummy.  Actually, a better way to describe it would be
'barely concealed fury.' Frankly, we hate each other's guts, which is fine
with me, and is apparently fine with her as well.

	 I suppose it started at our first meeting.  We didn't exactly get
off on the right foot, though it still seems silly to me to get all riled up
about a little handshake.  I mean, I for one wouldn't give a second
thought to someone shaking my hand, senshi or no.  Geez, and I thought
Americans were hung up on public tactile contact.

	Anyway, since then we haven't been too friendly, which can be
inconvenient at times.  Take last year, when Mars was DepCinc of the Fleet. 
Now it's Jupiter's job, but before then, Mars and I would have the most
awful rows at Serenity's briefings.  It's a wonder she didn't kill me, but I
suppose that that restraint is one of her redeeming qualities.

	In any case, all that was in the background when Jen reprimanded me
for insulting Admiral Rei Hino, Deputy Commander in Chief of Her Majesty's
Armed Forces, Princess and Super Sailor Senshi of Mars.  That's her full
title, by the way.  No-one ever uses it, even under the most formal
circumstances.  It's just one of those things that's just there in case some
protocol maven decides that she can't be plain Sailor Mars.  To be accurate,
my full title would be Lady Captain Eileen A Pearcy, the Sailor Senshi of
America.  Weird, huh?  Thank heavens we Americans aren't ones for those long
drawn out titles.  Most people get along fine just calling me America.
Heaven forbid I have a title like Serenity's.

	What was I saying?  Oh yeah, so I just apologized for downing Rei.

	"So, Sammy's up on the Moon, huh?  I've been meaning to pay a visit
up there."

	"Today?"

	"Only if you want to."  I really didn't want to.  But if she wanted
to . . . .  "And you've got that phone call to make, remember?"

	"Oh, right," she replied, blushing.  I could go on and on about how
cute she is when she blushes, but you'd . . . pike?  Is that that obscure
TwenCen term?  Jen's really corrupting me.  Half the time she's dropping
twentieth century slang without even knowing it.  Well, that's probably an
exaggeration.

	Anyway, I was saying that I won't say how cute she was.  That's
partially because she isn't cute.  Not really, I mean, she's cute, but she's
not cute, much as she's gorgeous, but she's not gorgeous.  She's just Jen,
and for whatever reason, that's so much more accurate than any other
adjective that I could come up with.

	In any case, she made the call.  Somehow.  Using that monstrosity of
a piece of polymer she calls a phone.  I got it as a novelty gift for her
last birthday.  It looks like a twenty-first century phone, with the tiny
postage-stamp screen and even that ancient ten-digit keypad.  It responds
to voice like any normal phone, though.  It's only a replica of an old-time
phone; I shudder to think of what an original would go for nowadays.

	After a bit, she hung up. "So?"

	"She said it would be great to see us.  She's off early, so she
might be able to show us around a few shops up there."

	I was surprised.  "They have shops?"  True, I don't pay much
attention to Lunar matters, but I thought that I would have known about
something like that.

	"Lots of them."

	"Hmph."  I drummed my fingers on the table idly.  "Sanjouin?"

	"Yes?" replied the AI.  The Palace can be a pain sometimes.  We've
got one of the best AIs around, which services everyone in the Palace. 
However, the higher-ups keep changing its damned name.  Lord only knows
where they got the name Sanjouin from.

	"Sanjouin, can you get us two seats on the next available shuttle to
the Moon?"

	"Certainly.  You've got #433, she leaves in an hour from Ryo
Spaceport."

	"Great."  I forced a smile.  "Okay, Jen, let's go."

***

	A few hours later we were on the final approach to the Moon.  Now, I
know you're going to laugh at this, but I've never been there.  Can you
imagine that?  I mean, nowadays, kids in Crystal Tokyo take *field trips* to
Tranquillity Base, for heaven's sake.  On the other hand, perhaps that's the
point.  Only the richest of Americans, or for that matter, non-Japanese, can
afford to go to the Moon.  Jen and I?  We're senshi.  We made it for free.

	On the other hand, we senshi are the self-appointed saviors of the
world.  If that doesn't accord us special status, I don't know what does.

	The surface of the Moon really hasn't changed much in the past four
thousand years.  There are only a few signs that mankind has been back since
the 1970's, and even fewer that we were there during the Silver Millennium. 
A few ruins of the reign of Serenity I still remain.  Most were found buried
under meters of lunar dust, preserved for millennia until the first
expeditions in the 2400's.

	Looking out over all of it, I was inevitably reminded that the whole
shebang is owned by Serenity, lock, stock, and barrel.  Amazing.  All that
stuff in 1969 about coming in peace for all mankind?  Out the window. 
Serenity is still princess of the Moon, and by any standard you want to
measure it by, she inherited it fair and square.  She's nice about it, I
suppose.  If you have the cash, you can go gawk at the leftovers from the
United States' Apollo missions.  But most of the surface is still clean and
pristine.  Only certain areas are open to visitors, and just a few more are
open to scientists and military personnel.  Aside from a few spaceports
hidden in craters, there isn't much to show that mankind has returned to
where it was so long ago, and certainly no proof if you go outside on Earth
and look at the full Moon.

	For the real proof, you have to go underground.

	After an interminable wait, our shuttle set down at Spaceport Gamma. 
Fancy name, I know.  It's what you get when a warmonger like Mars gets put
in charge.  There's a movement afoot to rename it, thankfully.  Gamma is
about three hours' walk from Tranquillity Base, assuming you suit up and
walk across the surface.  It's about five minutes by tube, and tube is the
real way to go.

	We disembarked and looked around the terminal, taking a few moments
to get acclimated to the one-sixth of earth gravity.  Tourist season hadn't
begun in earnest, and things were pretty deserted.  Thus, we found Sammy
without much trouble.

	"Captain!"  A blonde who had been reading news from a terminal
looked up and ran towards Jennifer, embracing her in a bear hug that looked
mighty uncomfortable.  "It's so good to see you again!"

	"Same here," Jen squeaked.  They disentangled, and Jen looked Sammy
up and down.  You've grown a bit."

	"Yes, and . . . oh!  Sorry!"  Sheepishly, she stepped back a couple
meters and snapped off a salute.  Grinning, Jen returned it.

	"At ease, Commander.  Let's forget all that protocol mess for a
couple days, hm?"

	Days?

	"Certainly, sir . . . I mean, Sakachi-san . . . I mean, Jennifer."

	Jen turned to me.  "Sammy-san, this is my . . . er . . . friend
Eileen."

	She bowed, which still never fails to embarrass me.  More proof that
no matter how long I live here, I'll never be fully Japanese.  "Pleased to
meet you, Captain."

	"Yeah, sure," I said uneasily.  "You can forget the 'sir' stuff with
me, too."

	"Of course," she giggled.  I tried to appraise her.  This little girl 
. . . well, really a woman, but take a year or so off her, and *this* was
the girl Jen had called her right-hand man during Pleiades's cruise? 
Extraordinary.

	"Okay," she said, "I've got the rest of the afternoon off.  What do
you want to do?" She looked at me carefully.  "Have you ever been to the
Apollo XI site?"

	"Er . . . "

	"Trust me, Eileen, it's nothing really special," said Jen.

	I'm sure she got a kick out of the look on my face.  "Really?"

	"Yes.  Just a rickety collection of aluminum and glass, what you'd 
expect from a first attempt."

	I tried to look hurt.  "Still, most historians agree that it was my 
country's greatest achievement."

	"Really?  I thought your greatest achievement was not getting blown
up in 1962."

	"Ah, so that's how it's going to be, hm?"  But it was a joking tone. 
Living with Jen, you've got to appreciate her sense of humor, which more
often than not gets linked to history.  Come to think of it, the US did do a
good job avoiding nuclear war during the . . . Chilean Missile Crisis? 
Colombian?  Something like that.  Jen always was better than me at history,
no matter how fervently I refused to admit it.

	"Yeah."  She shifted her weight to the other foot.  "You really want
to go see it?"

	I looked over to Sammy.  "If it's not too much trouble."

	"No, not at all!  Right this way."  We began walking along.  While I
gawked and played the role of the ignorant tourist, Sammy and Jen caught up
on old times.

***

	In Crystal Tokyo, mass transit is an extremely good idea.  On the
Moon, it's a way of life.

	The tube, what the Lunars call the system of subways, links all
installations on the satellite.  It's very efficient, actually, and leaves
the surface unmarred.  In a few minutes, we were one hundred meters south of
Tranquillity Base, and about four hundred meters below it.

	We got in an elevator, and for a couple moments I felt heavier than
I'd felt since setting down on the Moon.  This was predictable; I was in an
accelerating elevator, after all.  Then, the doors opened, we stepped out,
and I sucked in my breath.

	Before me was a collection of golden foil and support struts that
had once held the Lunar Module.  It looked slightly pitted; it had had a few
hundred years of micrometeoroid damage to contend with.  Around it, the
lunar landscape had been preserved; the footprints of Neil Armstrong and
Buzz Aldrin were still there, as were their instruments and the American
flag, now hopelessly out of date with fifty stars.  That wasn't the part
that took my breath away.

	The shocking thing was that I was on the surface of the Moon.

	I knew, intellectually, that there was a shield protecting us from
the vacuum.  But it's one thing to know it, and another thing to look out
and realize that the only thing between you and explosive decompression is a
bit of magic.  There was no way to tell where the little bubble of
protection began.  As far as my eyes could tell, we stood, unshielded, on
the surface of the Moon, with a nice crescent Earth overhead.

	My last cognizant thought was that now was a hell of a time to find
out that I was agoraphobic.  Then I fainted.

***

	The next thing I remember was blinking up at the ceiling (thank
heavens, there *was* a ceiling, and seeing a curtain of red.  Then I
realized that it was Jen looking down at me with concern, and her red hair
falling straight down onto my nose.

	"Hi!" I said weakly.  It was the best I could come up with.  Sorry.

	"Eileen!  I was so worried about you!"

	Really?

	"That's nice to hear," I replied.  I sat up a bit and looked around. 
I was in a lounge of some sort, filled with couches and so forth.  Sort of
like a spaceport lounge, actually.  Across from us was an elderly couple
watching us with interest.  Next to Jen, I noticed Sammy, who looked about
to cry.  Poor thing.

	"Are you sure you're okay?"

	"Never better," I lied.  "But Sammy, would you mind giving me a bit
of warning before you spring something like that on me?"

	"Like what?"

	"Like the whole fricking Moon, for one thing!"  Geez, you'd think
people up here would expect a few people to get overwhelmed!

	"Eileen," said Jen patiently, "you've seen pictures of the lunar
landing site before, haven't you?"

	"Yes."

	"There weren't any girders or glass domes or anything, were there?"

	"No," I said, trying to figure out what she was driving at.

	"You didn't think those were antiques, did you?"

	"Er . . . ."  Now I was starting to feel a bit silly.

	"The shield's been there for ages, you know."

	Ages?  And no-one had lodged a complaint about it?

	"It would be nice to have some sort of visual reminder that it's
there, you know."

	It was Sammy's turn to look sheepish.  "Well, there are a set of
lights ringing the site that mark where the field ends, but that's so far
from the trails and benches that most people never see it, and-"

	"Yeah, that's nice.  Well-"

	"Sammy-san?  I think Eileen must be a bit thirsty.  You want to get
her some water?"

	Wait a minute.  "I'm not thirsty at all, actually, and-"

	"Some water.  Now."  It was her Captain Sakachi voice.  I can't
stand it when she uses it, because I know that when she uses it, things are
probably going to turn out badly for me.

	We watched Sammy obediently trot off like that.  For a moment, I
thought about what it must be like to command that kind of respect in a
person.  Just rammed home the point, I suppose, the point that while I have
a lot of power . . . if you want to call it that . . . , I really don't have
the command instinct Jen has.  If you want to call it instinct, that is.  I
think she makes a lot of it up as she goes.  But she does a good job at it,
so it hardly matters, does it?

	"Eileen?"

	"Yes?" I asked meekly.

	"Why didn't you tell me?"

	Rule number two of public relations: feigning ignorance is a skill
that is absolutely essential.  "Tell you what?"

	"Don't even try it, Eileen.  I've seen the notes for your book on
PR."

	Damn.  See if I have her pre-read it, then.  I thought a bit about
how to say this.  "Well, I didn't know, for one thing.  I mean, you don't
just wake up one day and decide that you're agoraphobic, and-"

	"Still, Eileen, couldn't you have known?"

	"Well, I suppose I had a few hints."  And I had, in a way.  In
retrospect, this made a lot of things make sense.  "I mean, I did a lot of
stuff in school, but it was always inside.  My room in Pennsylvania was
pretty cramped, just the way I like it.  My office is a lot smaller than I'm
entitled to have.  I remember that I loved to walk in the woods, but put me
in a field and I just had to get out of there.  Lots of little things.

	"I don't recall any sort of psychiatric exams or anything about it. 
My parents always thought that I was normal-"

	"Even after you came out?"

	Touché.  "Before that, you ninny," I said, trying to inject some
levity into the situation.  A look into her blue eyes told me I wouldn't be
off that easily.

	"Never any hints?"

	"What, are you thinking of entering the psychiatry profession?  No,
no overt hints that anyone told me about."

	"Hmph.  I'll have to check with Records on that," referring to the
several super-computers on which was stored pretty much every single datum
of interest on anyone you wished to name that was deemed open to the public.

	"*We'll* have to check."

	"As you say."  Truthfully, either of us had the clout to go to the
archives and investigate matters, but it was pretty much tacitly assumed
that things would be better if we did it together.

	"Yeah."

	"Eileen?"

	"Yes?"

	"Are you going to be . . . you know . . . okay with this?"

	"Okay?  Gee, you're acting like I've got cancer or Gurio syndrome or
something awful like that."

	"Sorry."  That was unexpected.  It was obvious that she was going to
consider the conversation closed, but I wasn't quite ready for that.  I
opened my mouth, but Sammy reappeared at that moment.

	"Here's your water, Pearcy-san."

	"Arigato," I said, taking the glass from the Cypherean.  Truthfully,
I can't decide if I like the old term (Venusian) or the new one (Cypherean)
better.  Apparently "Venusian" sounded rather awful to people who lived
there, and they moved to change it to a new one.  It was still the Venus
Republic, but its citizens were called Cyphereans, from some mythological
origin that's neither Greek nor Roman.

	"Well," said Jen, forcing a smile, "let's not make this a total
waste, shall we?  There are plenty of *enclosed* (I know it wasn't overt,
but I swear that she put the emphasis on the word) shopping places on the
Moon, which I'm sure Sammy-san can show us around."

	"Certainly."

***

	We sat at the terminal, waiting for our shuttle back.  It was late,
about 23:00 Lunar time, or 20:00 Tokyo time.  As we waited, I looked at the
stack of books that Jen had bought at a store.

	Books are, to me, an enigma.  For about seven hundred years, books
were a curiosity.  You'd have a few in your living room, but they were more
for decoration than anything else.  After all, with all of surviving human
writing from 5000 BC to the present available on computer, carrying around a
several kilogram hunk of wood pulp seemed like a fairly foolish proposition.

	That changed about the time of Serenity's quincentennial.  Around
then, the craze of books caught on, and suddenly it was like Gutenburg all
over again.  *Everyone* had to have books.  Which was nice in a way, because
with all the books being printed, the price of new books went through the
cellar.  Otherwise I'd never be able to buy Jen what she really wants for a
present, at least not without obviously spending a hell of a lot of money.

	They were mostly classics, practically all before 2500, which was
another problem I saw with Japan.  A lack of novelty.  I mean, let's face
it, things haven't changed around here in a few centuries.  And it's more
than obvious that Serenity likes it that way.  All you have to do is look at
the graduation numbers from the School.  They're dropping and dropping. 
Nowadays, one is all they're putting out.  Sooner or later, they'll close it
down, which had to happen sooner or later.  Then the number of senshi will
be set, and the status quo will be firmly in place.  Her Majesty can have
her Pax Serenity, and the rest of Homo sapiens . . . .

	Dammit, I hate when I start getting philosophical.

	"Well," I said, trying to make conversation . . . something that
seemed terribly hard to do right then . . . , "anything planned when we get
back?  Or the next day?" Please, please don't let this day end, because I
really don't want to face the day when she leaves.

	She pouted.  Why, God, why does she have to be so bloody right
whenever she pouts?  "You know as well as I do that I don't really have
anything to do until Seiza comes back."

	H.M.S. Seiza is her next assignment, due up in about five years or
so.  Pleiades, her old ship, is currently on a survey mission, seeing if
there's anything that needs mopping up along the path of her last voyage. 
Jen sort of wanted to go, or more accurately, she wanted me and her to go,
which I up until recently would have had no problem with, but she more or
less got politicked out of it.  Basically, HQ sees her as a major asset, and
doesn't want her frittering her time away on a two-bit survey ship.

	Apparently they overlooked the fact that last year, that was all
they saw her fit to do.  Of course, Jen doesn't know any of this, and I have
no plans of telling her.  Some things I just don't tell her for her own
sake.

	Anyway, Pleiades is out under an entirely new crew, and won't be
back for a couple years.  When she does, plans are for Pleiades to be
mothballed and put on display in CT.  Why?  Because the military-industrial
complex (I know, I know, an anachronism, but it's one of the few insults I
can get away with, since no-one close to Serenity knows what it means but
Jen and I), in the form of Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus (the three war-horses),
feels that it sends a message to the world reminding them of our strength. 
I feel it sends a message to the world saying that they should fear us, or
we'll have to do something to *make* you fear us, like beat up some poor
country or something.

	I recommended against it, of course.  And since it falls largely
under my domain, I was able to put up a damn good fight.  I had to, since at
that particular meeting I was the only one really opposed to it.  I still
say that they intentionally ganged up on me that day.  There's simply no
other reason for the war-horses to all be in town on the same day, and the
Reasonable Ones (my label for Mercury, Saturn, and Neptune, the three that
seem to try to separate themselves from the military as much as possible) to
all be elsewhere.  I'm not saying that the R.O.'s intentionally left. 
*Were* intentionally forced to leave, perhaps.  But not of their own
volition.

	Sour grapes?  Maybe.  But I don't think so.  All I know is that the
three war-horses were against me, and Venus, coming off her term as DepCinc,
was half on their side already.  Still, it says a lot for the faith Serenity
has in my regarding this sort of thing, that I was able to prolong the
debate by myself as long as I did.  But I lost, and Pleiades will be a sword
of Damocles hanging over the world, albeit a blunted and harmless sword,
and-

	"EILEEN!"

	I snapped my head around.  Jen was waving her hand in front of me,
looking at me like I was completely out of it.  If there's one thing I can't
do, it's multitask.

	"Eileen," repeated Jen more quietly, "are you okay?  You looked like
you were out of it, there."

	"Oh, I'm fine," I said reassuringly, "just thinking about a few
things."

	"You know," said Jen slowly, "maybe you should get back to Earth.  I
know Lunar gravity can do strange things to some people.  Maybe you're one
of them."

	"Maybe," I conceded, not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth. 
Any opportunity to get off this blasted ball of rock was welcome.

***

	Later, on the shuttle trip back, I sat in my aisle seat, sipping at
some drink.  It was pink, and it bubbled, but for the life of me I can't
remember what it was.

	"Eileen?"

	"Mmm?"  Okay, here we go.

	"You didn't like the Moon, did you."  It wasn't a question.

	"Don't be silly," I said.  "It was great.  It's just that we didn't
have time to spend much longer there."

	"Hmph."

	We flew on at a fairly good clip.  Several thousand kilometers and a
couple of minutes later, she spoke again.

	"Eileen?"

	"Mmm?"

	"You don't, you know, have to go out with me the next time."

	"What?"  I stared straight ahead.  If I looked at her I was lost.

	"You know what I'm talking about.  That ignorant act may work when 
dealing with the press, but it doesn't work with me."

	That hurt.

	"Jen, believe me.  I don't know what you're talking about.  What do
you mean, 'the next time?' You-"

	"You don't have to go with me on Seiza."

	So that's what it was about.  Seiza was going to be a three year
mission.  And on the basis of my performance in the past few hours, she
didn't think I could handle an extended stay in space.

	Maybe she was right.  But I was damned if I was going to admit that. 
I'd spent a year waiting for her to come back before.  There was no way I
was going to wait another three for her to come back from fighting God only
knows what.

	"Yes I do, Jen."

	"Eileen, we both know that . . . that . . . ."

	"Yes?" I urged, not wanting her to finish but needing her to anyway.

	"That you can't take being away from Earth for long."

	There.  It was out.

	"That's what you think?"

	"Well . . . ."

	"So you think I'd be happier sitting behind my desk waiting for you
to finish fighting Selenite or Pollux or whoever else the universe decides
to cough up?"

	"Eileen, that was a single incident-"

	"So you're one for one.  Face it Jen, there are some senshi that
everything happens to, and you're one of them.  First Selenite, then Gemini
. . . and I don't think fate is done with you yet." Which was, of course,
total bull.  Personally, I thought that fate could take a flying leap.  But
it was the only bullet in my barrel (please don't groan at my anachronisms. 
It's as close to humor as I get sometimes), so I shot it.

	"But-"

	"My mind's made up, Jen.  I've been in the back seat long enough. 
It's time to be in the front."

	"But not driving."

	"Oh yeah."  She could always beat me with metaphors.  But I could
beat her in other ways . . . not that way, you perv!

	"So, your mind is set on coming with me."

	"Yes."  Never mind that I'd much rather stay the hell on Earth.  To
be with her?  Anything.

	"Hm.  Well, we'll just have to wait a few years and see if you
change your mind."

	"I guess we will."

***

	So we fly on towards Earth.  We're in reentry now, and thanks to
modern technology, I can fall asleep while crashing through the atmosphere
at an unholy speed.  And who knows?  Five years is a long time.  A lot of
things change.  People change.  And maybe I can get Jennifer to stay on
earth.

	It's worth a shot.