"Martians use our broadcasts as a standard of judgment," Leila said. "And you know where _that_ leads. The more prominent the people in the newscasts, the higher the divorce rate. The more popular a video serial, the greater its emotional shilly-shallying. To Martians we're the last word in fickleness." "I know," Ellis agreed. "Our cultural geometry was always triangular." "Exactly. So how can Mirrh-Yahn break the news to his dry little fiancee back home? We're accustomed to inconstancy and to incontinence. We sing corny songs about girls who write jilting letters to their men in service. Our opera flaunts Perkinses and Mesdames Butterfly, and the fact that we enjoy them shocks the ascetic pants off the Martians. Did you know that their population control quota demands a strictly equal sex-ratio, so that there's never more than one boy for one girl from the beginning? Mirrh-Yahn simply hasn't it in him to leave Yrml dangling. He'd feel a renegade for the rest of his life." "_Mirrh_-Yahn," Ellis noted. "Obviously he's willing enough, if you're on a first-name footing." "I can't call him Yahn any longer, like a stranger. Mirrh-Yahn is a compromise." Ellis rummaged in his desk and brought out a personnel folder. "Dossier on J. Frederic Thomas, our young man on Mars. Maybe we can turn up an angle through him." The exchange ambassador's folder was neither interesting nor helpful. J. Frederic Thomas stood revealed as a dwarfish scholastic type, complete with massive glasses and receding hairline. "He looks more Martian than Terran," Leila said. "Is that deliberate?" "Mars sent us a man specially bred to fit into our culture, didn't they? Simple job here to turn up a Martian type. Matter of fact, J. F.'s reports show he fits in up there like a native." "Check with him, then," Leila said. "Though I can't imagine what help we can expect from a wizened little stick like that." * * * * * Leila was wrong. J. Frederic Thomas--who quite predictably, being paired off with the only unattached female on Mars as his cicerone, had immediately found himself caught in the same thorny dilemma that gouged his opposite number on Earth--was eager to help. The result of Ellis' inquiry was a swift letter from Yrml Orise y Yrl to Mirrh Yahn y Cona; a letter which Ellis turned over in duplicate, one in Martian ideograph, the other a translation, to Leila. It broke Yrml's engagement to Yahn for the excellent reasons that J. Frederic Thomas was not only more Martian in physique and deportment, but also possessed a fine reedy tenor which blended ever so better with Yrml's soprano in the less poignant duets from the _Tchulkione Serafi_. "The man never lived," Ellis pointed out, "Martian or Terran, no matter how relieved he might be, whose ego wouldn't need attention after a letter beginning _Dear Yahn_. Shall I let it go on through the mails, or will you--" Leila answered him on her way out. "Don't bother," she said.