”“Interesting,” Julia smirked.“Should I leave so you can all talk about me behind my back?” I asked with a silly grin.“We’ll talk about ...ou in front of you, Snuggle Bear. You always let the women have their way!”“So true!” I chuckled.I closed my eyes and leaned back against the wall and more or less tuned out the conversation between the girls, which was joined by Elyse a few minutes later. I continued to mostly ignore the conversation which drifted into wedding planning, dresses, flowers, and. “Then there suddenly a crack in that spherical shield of star system size and a perfectly spherical ship appears. Exactly one thousand meters in diameter. No visible propulsion, no antennas, nothing. As perfectly round and featureless as a billiard cue ball and there was no visible form of attack yet the Y’All ships exploded one after the other before they even could come into firing range and for the first time the Y’All retreated. We did finally destroy the last of them 2 years later, but. I did not have time to dwell on this; from Morton we were going straight home. I needed to look at four days of complete reports from Robert instead of a few highlights.Monday was decision day for Harrisburg and I wanted to be prepared.We were one hundred miles out when Marcy sent a text, “Your welcoming committee has been waiting for hours, and the restaurant has sold buckets of coffee.”When the plane taxied to a stop I understood the welcoming committee; it was a media frenzy. I expected one. She was, it has to be said, desperate to see him with a man. That’s when she hatched this plan with me. I had to go along with it for several reasons, not least was the fact that her husband would be a virgin. I was met at the airport by Joyce and her husband. I must admit I was not sure they would be there to meet me, but they were true to their word. We gave each other the customary peck on the cheek (Joyce and myself that is) and we travelled to their villa, via a rather nice watering.