question:  Why didn't Laura say yes?
context: 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.... 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. 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. 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. 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. And you, Laura, were with him. But your eyes were the eyes of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before. A moment later Mickey said, frowning, "What was he talking about, Ben? That's what most of you want, isn't it? I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.
output:  she knows he wants to go to space
options:  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