 Why didn't Laura say yes?
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] How can I tell you what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura. Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning.... The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after spawning its first-born. For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight. The first graduating class, Laura. They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up at them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility." Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. My parents had died in a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those "You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie Taggart. He was Chief Jetman now on the Lunar Lady , a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White Sands. I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. The Universe was mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only half as big. Though it was daytime, I saw the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by the sons of Earth. They expect us to make a new kind of civilization and a better place out of Earth. And you, Laura, were with him.
 she knows he wants to go to space
 she isn't interested in marrying Ben  Mickey wouldn't want that  she was jealous of Ben's future plans  she knows he wants to go to space