“I saved my trip home,” she said, and laughed at his expression. She returned to kiss him some more. “It’s me should be thanking you! Such an opportunity! Thank you, thank you.”

“No, thank you!”

“No, thank you!”

And even in his agony he laughed. “I love you, Zo.”

“And I love you.”

But if she didn’t hurry she would miss her shuttle.

2

The shuttle was a pulsed fusion rocket, and they would reach Earth the day after tomorrow. And in a decent gravity the whole time, except for during the somersault.

All manner of things were changing because of this sudden shrinkage of the solar system. One small result was that Venus was no longer needed as a gravity handle for rocket travel, and so it was coincidence only that had Zo’s shuttle, the Nike of Samothrace, passing fairly near to the shaded planet. Zo joined the rest of the passengers in the big skylight ballroom to look at it as they passed. The clouds of the planet’s superheated atmosphere were dark; the planet appeared as a gray circle against the black of space. The terraforming of Venus was proceeding apace, the whole planet in the shade of a parasol, which was Mars’s old soletta with its mirrors repositioned so that they did just the opposite of what they had done in front of Mars; rather than redirect light onto the planet, they reflected it all away. Venus rolled in darkness.