Steve gave a great despairing cry. He stood for an instant staring down at the shattered fragments of the mirror. Then he came at me like a charging bull, his eyes bloodshot. I clipped him lightly on the jaw. "That's all I wanted to know, Steve," I said. "Thanks, pal." I looked down at him, lying in a crumpled heap at my feet. I was glad he hadn't fallen on his wounded side. He was plenty sturdy, and he came from a long-lived family, and I didn't think a little clip on the jaw could hurt him. I hoped he'd forgive me when he woke up. That was important, because I thought a lot of Steve. When you've been to Mars, when you've fought your way through the red and raging dust storms, and labored beneath the naked glare of the sun, and juggled with men and ships and supplies like some tremendous Herculean figure in the morning of the world, you'll never really feel at home on Earth. You'll see the world of ordinary men and women as a vision of Lilliput, too small to be measurable in terms of human worth. You'll be lost and helpless, blind and staggering beneath the weight of a memory you can't throw off. A memory of bigness, too much bigness, integrated into your every fiber, as much a part of you as the beating of your heart. You'll lurch and over-reach yourself, you'll never feel at home on Earth, never really at home. You'll find a way to come back to Mars. I smiled down at Steve. So Steve had come back to go prospecting, like an ordinary greed-driven man, and only I knew he was one of the scant dozen great constructive geniuses who had made possible man's conquest of space. He was an engineer, a physicist and--a man in need of a partner. So I'd just stepped up and introduced myself. Tom Gierson, who knew every square foot of Mars. For my purpose one Earth name was as good as another, and Tom Gierson had a sturdy ring. Hard-bitten Tom Gierson, bronzed by the harsh Martian sunlight, as much at home in the desert as the sturdy little spiked plants that thrust their way up through the parched soil when the spring begins to break. Steve's finest achievement was years in the past, but he was a young man still, with a young man's need of a woman as great as himself to share every moment of his waking life. That woman was waiting for him, but I had to be sure that he'd really go berserk if I smashed the glass. I was sure now. I raised my arm, and out of the ruins the Martians came. * * * * * Steady hands lifted Steve up, and a hushed silence ringed Steve round. "Azala," I said. "Where is she--" Then I saw her. She was advancing straight toward me through the glare of sunset on desert sand, a shining eagerness in her eyes. The girl of the mirror, young and straight and alive, her hair the color of red sand and sunset glow, her eyes twin dark stars. She paused before me and raised her eyes in questioning wonder. "Go to him," I said. "He will never love another woman. I can promise you that."