Birk stopped and turned abruptly to face her. “I tried to tell you before, but you wouldn’t listen. Neither of us has any say in the matter. There isn’t any way for us to get off this planet. That’s one of the harsh facts of life here. When you adjust to that, maybe we can talk some more.” He started walking along the shore again.
The woman again had to hurry to catch up. “I have to try, don’t you see? I can’t live without hope.”
And I can’t live with it, Birk thought, but said nothing aloud.
“Even if we ourselves can’t leave,” Michi went on, “you have enough technical knowledge to build robot-controlled rockets. Kagami tells me the automated factories here could produce thousands of them if you gave them the basic design. We could send them out in all directions with an SOS. Someone wo
