"I'm a touch claustrophobic, so I know how it must be." She shivered. "To be buried under all those tons and tons of--" "Immurement is security," Mirrh Yahn y Cona said. "The ultimate stability." "You'll get acclimatized," Ellis said. "It takes time." He broke off to peer through the gloom beyond the dance floor. "Good Lord, there's Ryerson of the _Post_, camera and all. If he recognizes me he'll know who Mirrh is and--" "Yahn," Mirrh Yahn y Cona corrected automatically. "With us the second name is impersonal. First is used only by loved ones." "Yahn, then," Ellis said. "If Ryerson tumbles, he'll want pictures and an interview. Yahn will be lionized before he's ready. Can't publicize him until he knows the ropes." "You'd better skip," Leila said. "If we all go, he'll spot us for sure." "Right." Ellis shoved some money at Leila. "Call me at my office when it's safe." When Ellis had gone and their waiter had brought drinks, they faced each other across the table, Yahn visibly on guard and Leila with the beginning of speculation in her eyes. "Maybe it's better like this, without protocol," she said. "Yahn, can you--do you dance in our gravity?" He was bitter again. "Remember my training. I am taller, stronger and more freakishly agile than any Martian--including my fiancee--has been for thousands of years." Her clear look made him ashamed and he added, "With us the dance is an art form only. Here the intent seems different." "It is," Leila said almost grimly. "Finish your drink, Buster. You're going to need it." * * * * * He needed several before the evening was finished. The Terran dance in its limited variations offered small challenge; Yahn mastered it with an ease that delighted Leila and brought tacit envy from other couples. The cocktails may have contributed to his own mixed reactions, lending primitive tactility to Leila's pliant response. Neither of them, when Ryerson of the _Post_ went away with his camera, considered calling Ellis. "I don't often enjoy my work so much," Leila said. "Let's not spoil the evening with diplomacy, shall we?" They left the Diplomatic vehicle for Ellis, rented an agency car and drove through the charged serenity of the night into the mountains. They talked the Moon down and the Sun up. Nothing took place that might have shocked a reasonably tolerant duenna, but by dawn they had reached the sort of understanding that comes spontaneously or not at all. "The biologists who tailored me to Terrestrial standards," Yahn said, "did their work too well. I find myself more Terran than Martian." The immovable obstacle, of course, was Yahn's obligation to Yrml, who would be waiting with enduring Martian patience for his return. Leila went into that matter later with Ellis, not so much to enlist his dubious sympathies as to clarify the bristly problem in her own troubled mind.