I didn't glance far. As I turned my face toward the girl sitting at my left, she turned hers, and our eyes met. I managed a smile and cocked an eyebrow toward the speaker's stand. She smiled back with her eyes and crinkled her nose. It was a smooth straight nose, and the eyes on each side of it were a clear cool gray, set well apart under level brows. That was Betty--level and straight, and cool, too, for that matter. I didn't realize all this at once, of course. Just now I only knew that she was calmly and compellingly beautiful, and that I didn't feel sane and practical any more, and certainly not disenchanted. There was a spatter of mildly enthusiastic applause, and I noticed the lecture hall again and saw that the President had finished and a youngish instructor was taking the stand to give out information about programs and class assignments. I got down enough to keep from getting lost. I heard him say the sections would be arranged alphabetically. That scared me--suppose this girl was named Wigglesworth or Zilch or some such and I would never see her again! I drew a circle around my name on the class roster they had given each of us at the beginning of the festivities and handed it to her. She smiled again and drew a circle around the name right next to it. Betty Day. So that was all right. * * * * * There is no time for social life at Space Tech. You go there for the training and you get your money's worth. Not that I cared--the work was hard, but it was exciting, and you could see the purpose of it as you went along. I would have worked even harder and not minded, because Betty Day was alongside in every class I had. After a few days we were eating lunch together every day in the campus slop shop, which arrangement I liked. It took my mind off the sort of food they served there. Every two or three weeks we found or took time to see a tridim together, since there is not much else in the way of extracurricular diversion at Tech. It was a very slight intimacy, but it meant a good deal to me, and I believed that it did to Betty too. She was always pleased to have me around, and she crinkled her nose at my jokes in a special way that she did for no one else's, and my jokes were not much better than the average, either. It was a long time before I tried to tell her about the way I felt. It was not until the three years at Tech were over and the Institute was letting down its hair to the extent of sealing our brow with the traditional farewell party for graduates known as the Blastoff.