Would he ever hold Aphrodite again?“Yes, you will,” said she in response to the unspoken question. “Whenever you travel with me, you must grasp ...e in that fashion, and so you can look forward to the privilege of holding me now and again when it is necessary for us to travel together to this place, or anywhere, for that matter.”‘This place’ was a location unknown to Thompson. He stood with Aphrodite on a walkway by the sea. In Toronto the weather had been cool, as autumn was coming to an end.. You know, that thing that happens some nights.”“What thing?”“You know. Fairy Night. When all that fire shows up in the sky?”I squint at him. “What are you talking about?”He looks at me weirdly. “Fairy Night. You know.” He gestures up into the sky. “With all those lights. It’s like fire, or ripples, or flashes.”“I have no idea what that is. Is this something that happens here?”“Yeah. It’s about every couple months, there are these ripples and silent explosions in the sky. Haven’t you seen it?”I. “Is it physically possible for him to take that ship through the circuit points and get it to groundborn space without getting caught?”Taz looked in his eyes, not liking one bit what she saw there, but she answered the question anyway. “He could do it,” she said. “With a little luck, anyway. There’s nothing faster than a ninety-nine in system right now except a few other ninety-nines that are hanging out. His officers are divided on the resolution, as are the enlisted, but there are enough of. The problem was that I worked at most 30 minutes in a day, and the rest of the time found me sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.Then it dawned on me! The teaching machine was also in the library purely for convenience in having a good place to put it. I figured "Why not?" and decided to learn about the things that interested me. Well, like any boy in that age group, I was all for adventure, especially since I had no chance of having one.The first thing I did was learn all I could.