In desperation she clung to a rough stone protruding from the bank, started to climb out, dropped back into the water and fought to hold back the tears. He said, "There's an easier place to climb a few yards ahead. I'll go back the way I came and meet you up on the bank." Relief came as she watched him swim away, watched the long muscles ripple on his back and shoulders. But it did not last. In feverish hurry she climbed out and twisted and squirmed to get into her clothes. She had hardly got the sweater over her head and her hair brushed back when he appeared. "Those clothes don't do you justice," he said. Confusion came again. "But the time will soon come," he added, "when our girls can have all the fine things written about in the old books." "How can you say that," she asked, "when every report brings news of another withdrawal, another terrible defeat? We've lost so many stations among the stars, there can hardly be any left." He looked down at the weed-grown earth, and she instantly became contrite. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know I'm never supposed to lose hope." He studied her eyes until she looked away. His hands found her shoulders. "Sue, there are forces at work about which you've never even dreamed. We need time. We need more manpower. We have to go on working. The only thing that can defeat us ultimately is here on this planet. It is our morale. As long as it is high we'll keep on sending ships out. The moment it breaks we are lost." Sue had noticed the tension and constraint in his voice that she had come to associate with the talking of men among themselves when they thought no woman or child was within hearing. Always they stopped talking when a girl approached, and put on a cheerful front. She wondered if they knew of some dark terror yet to be faced, so horrible that it couldn't be confided to their women and children. Would a knowledge of that dreadful thing, she asked herself, break the morale on the home planet? Wilson had changed the subject. He told her about the fine things he had read in books and heard from older men of that past before the beginning of the struggle. It reminded her of the fairy tales she had read as a child. It seemed impossible that a girl could have fine clothes and a house and a husband and children all her own. She couldn't grasp it. She felt that she wouldn't know how to live if there weren't rules to go by. She remembered vaguely when she was very small, that her mother prepared meals in a big white kitchen, but there was little reality in the memory. He accompanied her back to the dorm and on the way talked of things that stirred forlorn unrest in her body. It was a sense of tingling, suppressed under memory of Darth Brady. Lifting her to the windowsill, he pressed his lips against her ear and whispered, "I've made another request of the Council to send me out." His arms held her tight enough to stop her trembling. Then he released her and was gone.