She ran to Steve with a little glad cry and fell to her knees beside him. I wanted to break through the circle and slap Steve on the back, and wish him all the happiness on Mars. The first Earthian to wed a Martian, and it was tremendous, and I wanted to tell Steve-- But how could I tell him that Martians had numerous ways of watching Earthians, the very best being mirrors which were really two-way televisual instruments. How could I tell him that the alert Martian women had all been trained to watch and observe Earthians day and night? And all the while the Earthians thought they were carrying about with them, in beautiful jeweled artifacts of a dead culture, the living images of their heart's desire! Steve was awake now and sitting up straight, and the image was warm and alive in his arms. But how could I make Steve understand? I had a wild impulse to say: "I'd change places with you if I could, Steve. She's just about the cutest kid I know." You get to thinking that way when you've mingled with Earthians around desert campfires, studying them as you'd study a new neighbor who comes knocking at your door, the neighbor you fear at first and are never quite sure of until you really get to know and like him. You see, we had so much to offer one another. A young race, constructive, brawling, shouting its defiance to the stars. And an old race, imaginative, sensitive, heirs to a civilization on the wane, but needing just a few Steves to make it young and great again. I'd picked Steve because he was one of the shining ones of Earth. I'd known from the start that persuading him to wed a Martian woman would take plenty of doing. * * * * * Earthians are funny that way. Love to them is a complex thing, a web that has to be skillfully woven right from the start. Beauty alone isn't enough. You have to say to them: "You'll never hold that woman in your arms. Can't you see how hopeless it is?" Then the iron goes deep. If a love flies straight in the teeth of despair and comes out all right in the end, it will be as strong as death. So I'd arranged for Steve to stumble on the mirror, to pick up that two-way televisual circuit into a very special paradise for two. And I'd opposed and warned him just to make sure he'd think of himself as a man facing hopeless odds to win through to an undying love. On the other side it was easier. Azala had fallen in love with Steve before we put her on the other end of that televisual circuit. But seeing him wounded and in need of her had turned it into what Earthians call a great love. Perhaps Earthians would someday smash the aura that had flamed about the heads of the Martian rulers for fifty thousand years. I'd done my best to smash it. I had gone simply and humbly among Earthians, seeking a fresh wind to trundle the cinders of a dying culture.