I was not alone in these short prominades. I used to pass girls of all ages doing exactly the same as me, some alone and some in small groups, standin... outside a tent, watching the owner come to a conclusion then giggling off happy to have seen and inadvertably helped. I remember at a get-together being invited to sit on the lap of a friend of my mothers, around a table, where everyone sat eating and drinking and being boisterous. I was sitting with one leg either side of his, pulled up close. I wanted to kiss her at that moment, but I wasn’t sure she wanted it. Instead, I asked the question that had been burning inside me ever since I first saw her tears reflected in the picture. ‘Jill, when you cry onstage, you really cry. You’re so good at it. You’re not acting. You are crying. I’ve seen you. What do you think of to make yourself do that?’ Jill looked away to the back corner of the building, in the direction where our cars were parked. ‘I have to go. It’s late and I have to be at. Let's get some distance from the Revenge so they stop firing on her."The destroyer heeled to port and started climbing away from the damaged ship.Below her, twenty shuttles, twelve fighters and eight bombers streaked for the Atlanta carrying nine hundred of her crew. Her shields were bright white and starting to overload the shield generators, when she left her sister ship behind.As she climbed, she unknowingly climbed up into the outer ring of the defense satellites and forty heavy lasers. I felt sorry for poor little Wes, he had moved on to more solid nourishment already.I think the most difficult thing for Tina was that she couldn't participate in our desert project since the children were too young to fly. On the weekends I would take three or four of the others and work on a section of land in New Mexico, Arizona, or California. We owned most of what would have been the Mojave National Preserve.The land had been purchased for next to nothing from owners who thought we were.