Was it a real memory? After all, she had been getting on toward four then, so it might be.

But now that memory - real or not - was overlaid by other thoughts, by an increasing realization of just how large a planet was. Erythro was over twelve thousand kilometers across, not eight kilometers. She couldn't grasp that size. It didn't look that large on the screen and she couldn't imagine standing on it and seeing for hundreds - or even thousands - of kilometers. But she knew she wanted to. Very much.

Aurinel wasn't interested in Erythro, which was disappointing. He said he had other things to think of, like getting ready for college. He was seventeen and a half. Marlene was only just past fifteen. That didn't make much difference, she thought rebelliously, since girls developed more quickly.

At least they should. She looked down at herself and thought, with her usual dismay and disappointment, that somehow she still looked like a kid, short and stubby.

She looked at Erythro again, large and beautiful and softly red where it was lit. It was large enough to be a planet but actually, she knew, it was a satellite. It circled Megas, and it was Megas (much larger still) that was really the planet, even though everyone called Erythro by that name. The two of them together, Megas and Erythro, and Rotor, too, circled the star Nemesis.

‘Marlene!’

Marlene heard the voice behind her and knew that it was Aurinel. She had grown increasingly tongue-tied with him of late, and the reason for it embarrassed her. She loved the way he pronounced her name. He pronounced it correctly. Three syllables - Mar-LAY-nuh - with a little trill to the ‘r’. It warmed her just to hear it.

She turned and mumbled, ‘Hi, Aurinel,’ and tried not to turn red.

He grinned at her. ‘You're staring at Erythro, aren't you?’

She didn't answer that. Of course that's what she would be doing. Everyone knew how she felt about Erythro. ‘How come you're here?’ (Tell me you were looking for me, she thought.)