"Well," he said finally, and opened his arms wide to envelop her in a crushing hug.

"Hello, Grandpa," the private said, her contralto voice huskier than usual, and wrapped her arms about him in return.

"I tried my damnedest to get home for your graduation formation, Alley," Sebastian O'Shaughnessy said a few minutes later, half-sitting, with his posterior perched comfortably on the corner of his desk and his arms crossed. "It just wasn't on."

"I knew when they assigned you out here that you wouldn't be able to be there, Grandpa," she told him, and smiled. "I'm just glad my own movement orders left me enough slack to stop in and visit you on my way through.

"I am, too," he said. "On the other hand, my spies kept me informed on your progress." He frowned portentously. "I understand you did fairly well."

"I tried, at any rate," she replied.

"I'm sure you did. And I guess I'll just have to be content with your graduating second in your training brigade. But by a full tenth of a percentage point?" He shook his head sadly. "I mean, I had had my heart set on your graduating first, but I suppose that was unrealistic of me."

His eyes flickered with laughter, and she shook her head.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Grandpa," she said politely, "but I was at a certain disadvantage, you know."

"But nineteenth in PT?" he said mournfully. "It's a good thing you maxed everything else, that's all I can say!"

"Only two of the boots who beat me out in PT were from Old Earth," she told him severely, "and both of them were male, and one of them was a reserve triathlete in the last Olympics. The others were all from off-world. From heavy-grav planets, as a matter of fact. And only three of them were female."