"Wait until you hear--" he began,
and broke off, looking at someone who was sitting in the chair in front
of his desk, somebody whose back was turned to me. Then the person
twisted and I stopped cold, blinking and wondering if this were a
hallucination and I'd wake up in the starship's skyhook, far out in
space.
Then the woman cried, "Race, _Race_! Don't you know me?"
I took one dazed step and another. Then she flew across the space
between us, her thin arms tangling around my neck, and I caught her up,
still disbelieving.
"_Juli!_"
"Oh, Race, I thought I'd die when Mack told me you were leaving tonight.
It's been the only thing that's kept me alive, knowing--knowing I'd see
you." She sobbed and laughed, her face buried in my shoulder.
I let her cry for a minute, then held my sister at arm's length. For a
moment I had forgotten the six years that lay between us. Now I saw
them, all of them, printed plain on her face. Juli had been a pretty
girl. Six years had fined her face into beauty, but there was tension in
the set of her shoulders, and her gray eyes had looked on horrors.
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