After the first shock of seeing them wore off, I wrote on my pad: "Names used by humans of both genders. Significant." They spoke English, the current _lingua franca_, with only a trace of a sibilant accent and they smelled of formaldehyde. I explained their rights under our divorce laws. Did the best I could, that is, not being quite sure who was married to whom and under what conditions their marriage functioned--if at all. Finally I said, "Tell me all about it." Clare, who seemed to be the spokesman for the group and therefore assumed, in my mind, a male gender, waved a boneless arm excitedly. "Had we known we were becoming subject to your Terrestrial laws by residing here we would never have remained. Our situation is desperate." I wrote on my pad: "Situation desperate." "Yes," hissed Vivian breathlessly. "Desperate." I underlined _desperate_. "We are, as you may know," Clare continued giving Vivian a dark look, "Trisexual symbiotes. You do not have any analogous situation among mammals on Terra." I glanced at Thais. "We sure haven't," she said with feeling. "But it sounds _fabulous_." "It is not, I assure you," Clare said running a four-fingered hand over his scaly crest in what I took to be a Venerian gesture of distraction. "We are not _married_ as you people understand the term--" "Not married," I wrote, underscoring it heavily. "But your law enforcement agencies insist that our symbiosis is analogous to marriage and therefore subject to the regulations governing that odd institution." "What a bore," Thais said helpfully. "Our problem is this. The three of us live in what you might roughly call a connubial state. We--what is your word?--co-inhabit?--" "That's close," I said. "We live together, that is. But more than eroticism is involved, I assure you." "Of course." Now it began to sound like most of my other cases and I could get my teeth into it. "You seem doubtful," the Venerian said with a sharp-toothed frown. "Let me reiterate that what I say is so. The three of us have spent a _ygith_ together--that is more than fourteen of your long years. But now the _ygith_ is over and we must seek another--how would you say it?--liaison?" "This is essential?" I asked. "Not just a whim?" It is, you see, the duty of a Legal Eagle to make every effort to save a marriage. In view of the circumstances, I felt that surely this was a marriage unique and therefore _worth_ saving. "No whim," declared Clare emphatically. "Each _ygith_--or what you Terrestrials would call 'mating period'--we must uh--realign. If we do not, deleterious effects are certain. Our health goes bad. We may even die."