false faces and knowing there was something different inside. Nor could she say anything about it. She had tried sometimes when she had been younger, but her mother had grown angry and told her she must never say things like that.
As she got older, she could see the falseness more clearly, but it bothered her less. She had learned to take it for granted and spend as much time as possible with herself and her own thoughts.
Lately, her thoughts were often on Erythro, the planet they had been orbiting almost all her life. She didn't know why these thoughts were coming to her, but she would skim to the observation deck at odd hours and just stare at the planet hungrily, wanting to be there - right there on Erythro.
Her mother would ask her, impatiently, why she should want to be on an empty barren planet, but she never had an answer for that. She didn't know. 'I just want to,' she would say.
She was watching it now, alone on the observation deck. Rotorians hardly ever came here. They had seen it all, Marlene guessed, and for some reason they didn't have her interest in Erythro.
There it was; partly in light, partly dark. She had a dim memory of being held to watch it swim into view, seeing it every once in a while, always larger, as Rotor slowly approached all those years ago.
Was it a real memory? After all, she had been getting on toward four then, so it might be.
But now that memory - real or not - was overlaid by other thoughts, by an increasing realization of just how large a planet was. Erythro was over twelve thousand kilometers across, not eight kilometers. She couldn't grasp that size. It didn't look that large on the screen and she couldn't imagine standing on it and seeing for hundreds - or even thousands - of kilometers. But she knew she wanted to. Very much.
Aurinel wasn't interested in Erythro, which was disappointing. He said he had other things to think of, like getting ready for college. He was seventeen and a half. Marlene was only just past fifteen. That didn't make much difference, she thought rebelliously, since girls developed more quickly.
At least they should. She looked down at herself and thought, with her usual dismay and disappointment, that somehow she still looked like a kid, short and stubby.
She looked at Erythro again, large and beautiful and softly red where it was lit. It was large enough to be a planet but actually, she knew, it was a satellite. It circled Megas, and it was Megas (much larger still) that was really the planet, even though everyone called Erythro by that name. The two of them together, Megas and Erythro, and Rotor, too, circled the star Nemesis.
'Marlene!'
Marlene heard the voice behind her and knew that it was Aurinel. She had grown increasingly tongue-tied with him of late, and the reason for it embarrassed her. She loved the way he pronounced her name. He pronounced it correctly. Three syllables - Mar-LAY-nuh - with a little trill to the 'r'. It warmed her just to hear it.
She turned and mumbled, 'Hi, Aurinel,' and tried not to turn red.
He grinned at her. 'You're staring at Erythro, aren't you?'
She didn't answer that. Of course that's what she would be doing. Everyone knew how she felt about Erythro. 'How come you're here?' (Tell me you were looking for me, she thought.)
Aurinel said, 'Your mother sent me.'
(Oh well.) 'Why?'
'She said you were in a bad mood and every time you felt sorry for yourself, you came up here, and I was to come and get you because she said it would just make you grumpier to stay here. So why are you in a bad mood?'
'I'm not. And if I am, I have reasons.'
'What reasons? Come on, now. You're not a little kid any more. You've got to be able to express yourself.'
Marlene lifted her eyebrows. 'I am quite articulate, thank you. My reasons are that I would like to travel.'
Aurinel laughed. 'You've traveled, Marlene. You've traveled more than two light-years. No-one in the whole history of the Solar System has ever traveled even a small fraction of a light-year - except us. So you have no right to complain. You're Marlene Insigna Fisher, Galactic Traveler.'
Marlene suppressed a giggle. Insigna was her mother's maiden name and whenever Aurinel said her three names in full, he would salute and make a face, and he hadn't done that in