Orb
continuing his teasing. “You heard Kyle. One thing. Anyway, what else could you possibly miss? Your dollhouse?”
    Stretching herself across the table, Diana gave a quick, hard punch to Thompson’s thickly muscled shoulder. Based on his smirk, and her silence, this seemed to temporarily satisfy them both.
    “For me, give me my rose garden,” Kelly said, the reminiscence bringing a smile to her face. “So many new genetic varieties. Digging in the warm soil. The warmth of the sun on my face.” She looked warily at Thompson. “Is that three things?”
    “We’ll accept it.”
    “And for you, Paul?” I asked.
    The climatologist considered a moment and said, through a frown, “It may sound a little corny or sentimental.”
    “Probably,” said Thompson, “But try us.”
    “Paris,” he said, starting to laugh. “Yes, in the springtime, if you must have it out. The charged atmosphere. The cafes. At night, the glittering lights of Champs-Elysees. Have you been there Kyle? No!
Mais pourqoui?
You live in New York? But it is only an hour away! Diana and I must show you!”
    I willingly agreed to be their guest. Looking across the table, I noticed Thompson staring into space.
    “What do you miss? Visits to the dentist?”
    Coming back from wherever he was, he said one word:
    “Maryann.”
    “Some day I’d like to hear about her,” said Diana with satisfaction, “but
you
know the rules: Absolutely no family, friends, and lovers.”
    “Maryann came to mean more to me than the woman—in a moment of insanity—I named her after,” Thompson responded. “She’s my fishing boat.”
    “You tricked me,” Diana said, perturbed, but smiling.
    “At seven meters she’s a bit small…”
    “I’d rather hear about the woman,” Diana interrupted.
    “That’s not going to happen.”
    “Ever hook into a Striped bass?” I asked.
    “Sure,” said Thompson. “Caught a twenty-two kilogrammer off Block Island, New York.”
    “I speared a smaller striper skin diving. With the spear and trailing line still hooked in, it took me for quite a ride. Anyway, it’s my turn. What I really miss most is scuba diving. If I had to pick a particular memory? Being immersed in a school of Spotted eagle rays as they arced and glided above me in the warm waters of the Seychelles.”
    And so it went, we happily, almost greedily, took our turns, each of us sharing a memory, making a small connection, temporarily setting aside the pressure of the mission.
    All but Doctor Melhaus, who, through the awkward anticipatory silence that followed, remained quiet. To ease him past his reluctance, I tried to make light of it saying, “Pardon the obvious pun, Larry, but you can’t get off the hook that easily.”
    Looking up distractedly, almost as if he had heard none of the previous conversation, he said: “Do you realize 231-P5 is round?”
    It was a blatantly self-evident statement, uttered at the wrong moment, delivered with a flat and emotionless tone of voice—and it gave me a momentary start. I noticed a quick flash of concern cross Kelly’s face. I couldn’t tell exactly what Thompson was thinking, perhaps he was annoyed, but he seemed to understand where Melhaus was going with this. In any event he said nothing and let things unfold.
    “And Earth is not. Round that is,” the physicist continued, raising his gaze from his AID to acknowledge us. “I’ll explain. The distance measured from Earth’s center to sea level at the equator is twenty-one kilometers longer than the distance measured from Earth’s center to sea level at either pole. The Earth, therefore, is an oblate spheroid due to the effects of its moon, the sun, variations in internal mass, and geological factors. These influences, no moon for example, are not applicable to 231-P5. I have calculated, using data Doctor Thompson provided, that P5 is at least as round as can be detected by the sensitivity of the
Desio’s
instruments; that is to say the planet is within one

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