hadn't even
thought of Sophia, who had perished all alone in the depths of space
that a world might live....

He turned to Arkalion. "Sophia?"

"We found her dead, Kit. But smiling, as if everything was worth it."

"It should have been me."

"Whoever Sophia was," said Stephanie, "she must have been a wonderful
woman, because when you got up, when you came to, her name was...."

"Forget it," said Temple. "Sophia and I have a very strange
relationship and...."

"All right, you said forget it. Forget it." Stephanie smiled down at him.
"I love you so much there isn't even room for jealousy.... Ummm....
Kit...."

"Break up that clinch," ordered Arkalion. "We're making one more stop
at Nowhere to pick up anyone who wants to return to Earth. Some of 'em
probably won't but those who do are welcome...."

"Jason will stay," Temple predicted. "He'll be a leader out among the
stars."

"Then he'll have to climb over my back," Alaric III predicted happily,
his eyes on the viewport hungrily.

Temple's jaw throbbed. He was tired and sleepy. But satisfied. Sophia
had died and for that he was sad, but there would always be a place
deep in his heart for the memory of her: delicious, somehow exotic,
not a love the way Stephanie was, not as tender, not as sure ... but a
feeling for Sophia that was completely unique. And whenever the
strangeness of the far-future Earth frightened Temple, whenever he
felt a situation might get the better of him, whenever doubt clouded
judgment, he would remember the tall lithe girl who had walked to her
death that a world might have the freedom she barely had tasted. And
together with Stephanie he would be able to do anything.

Unless, he thought dreamily as he drifted off to sleep, his head
pillowed again on Stephanie's lap, he'd wind up with a bum jaw the
rest of his life.

THE END

* * * * *

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