The tickets have been bought. Gladys is already putting the bags onboard." I've never known a woman as special as you before Ann. Never sobeautiful or...as charming." Oh Richard, stop, please. I can't bear it. I've adored my time here withyou as well and I'd give anything to be able to stay forever. Anything." Then why don't you?" What?" Ann's breath caught and her hand rise to her chest."Stay here in London Ann. I'm begging you. Don't ever go back." But I promised I'd return. I have. ' "What do you think?" I asked her as we waited for a slot to transport back up against the flow of new colonists arriving."I'll be spending a lot of time indoors, I guess," she sighed. "Still, it's a world, isn't it? Is the place all desert?" More or less," I replied, "We're terraforming and trying to introduce some decent vegetation, but we are also trying to preserve at least portions of the limited local ecology." I switched to comm, but left it verbal for Estrella's edification, "AI, open. Any way we left that afternoon with a date for her that night so we went home she had a shower before you know it where on our way to his she was nervous but we new this guy well hes single well built and friendly. we arrived at his flat he opened the door let us in offered us drinks we sat for half an hour my wife necked wine like it was water she went off to the toilet and while she was gone he asked me when he should start I said now if ya like so I pulled the chair to the corner of the. "Sorry," I said."It's alright. I'm just being silly." No."I led her into the bar area to grab a soda for the road. I meant to retrieve my backpack from the bedroom and come back out. But she followed me and sat on the edge of the bed with one leg folded under her, the other beginning to swing restlessly.I picked up the backpack and stood uncertainly before her. She patted the bed next to her, and I sat."I'm sorry," we each said simultaneously, then smiled at each other."You have nothing to be.