Beth knows a rhetorical question when she sees one, but there's something interesting about trying to hold Byerly to it. Seeing how he'll squirm out of actually answering, if he does (and he does), hearing what there is to aspire to on planets she's never heard of before. More than anything, she's starting to get the idea that getting Byerly talking--keeping him talking--will make the time go faster. He can go on and on, when he has a mind to.

Of course, then he turns it back on her, and that's not nearly as fun for her. But it's inevitable, she guesses, and what's he going to do with her hopes and dreams if she tells them to him? He can't get to her home any more than she can; the most he can do is try to stomp all her wishes flat, and she's determined not to let him.

"I want to see my sister again," she says, her gaze shifting occasionally from Byerly to the corpse and back again. "And my brother-in-law. Everyone else in our family's dead."

She pauses then, wondering if it's enough to be pointedly honest, or if she should try to get him to say something true--actually true--too. Wait, something in her says. At least see what he has to say.