was home for Marlene; she had never known anything else. But for herself, for Eugenia? Home was Earth and Moon and Sun and Mars and all the worlds that had accompanied humanity through its history and prehistory. They had accompanied life as long as there had been life. The thought that 'home' was not here on Rotor clung to her even now.
But, then, she had spent the first twenty-eight years of her life in the Solar System and she had done graduate work on Earth itself in her twenty-first to twenty-third years.
Odd how the thought of Earth periodically came to her and lingered. She hadn't liked Earth. She hadn't liked its crowds, its poor organization, its combination of anarchy in the important things and governmental force in the little things. She hadn't liked its assaults of bad weather, its scars over the land, its wasteful ocean. She had returned to Rotor with an overwhelming gratitude, and with a new husband to whom she had tried to sell her dear little turning world - to make its orderly comfort as pleasant to him as it was to her, who had been born into it.
But he had only been conscious of its smallness. 'You run out of it in six months,' he had said.
She herself hadn't held his interest for much longer than that. Oh well-
It would work itself out. Not for her. Eugenia Insigna was lost for ever between worlds. But for the children. Eugenia had been born to Rotor and could live without Earth. Marlene had been born - or almost born - to Rotor alone and could live without the Solar System, except for the vague feeling that she had originated there. Her children would not know even that, and would not care. To them, Earth and the Solar System would be a matter of myth, and Erythro would have become a rapidly developing world.
She hoped so. Marlene had this odd fixation on Erythro already, though it had only developed in the last few months and might leave just as quickly as it had come.
Altogether, it would be the height of ingratitude to complain. No-one could possibly have imagined a habitable world in orbit about Nemesis. The conditions that created habitability were remarkable. Estimate those probabilities and throw in the nearness of Nemesis to the Solar System and you would have to deny that it could possibly have happened.
She turned to the day's reports, which the computer was waiting, with the infinite patience of its tribe, to give her.
Yet before she could ask, her receptionist signaled and a soft voice came from the small button-speaker pinned to the left shoulder of her garment, 'Aurinel Pampas wishes to see you. He has no appointment.'
Insigna grimaced, then remembered that she had sent him after Marlene. She said, 'Let him come in.'
She cast a quick look at the mirror. She could see that her appearance was reasonable. To herself, she seemed to look younger than her forty-two years. She hoped she looked the same way to others.
It seemed silly to worry about her appearance because a seventeen-year-old boy was about to enter, but Eugenia Insigna had seen poor Marlene looking at that boy and she knew what that look portended. It didn't seem to Insigna that Aurinel, who was so fond of his own appearance, would ever think of Marlene, who had never been able to rid herself of her childhood pudginess, in any way other than as an amusing child. Still, if Marlene had to face failure in this, let her not feel that her mother had contributed to that failure in any way and had been anything but charming to the boy.
She'll blame me anyway, thought Insigna with a sigh, as the boy walked in with a smile that had not yet outgrown its adolescent shyness.
'Well, Aurinel,' she said. 'Did you find Marlene?'
'Yes, ma'am. Right where you said she'd be, and I told her you wanted her out of there.'
'And how is she feeling?'
'If you want to know, Dr Insigna - I can't tell if it's depression or something else, but she has a rather funny idea in her head. I don't know that she'd like my telling you about it.'
'Well, I don't like setting spies on her either, but she frequently has strange ideas and she worries me. Please tell me what she said.'
Aurinel shook his head. 'All right, but don't tell her I said anything. This one is really crazy. She said that Earth was going to be