A Vidar newscaster intercepted them before they reached the aircar beyond the administration building. Ricardo enjoyed the man’s nasal, staccato chatter after the soft slow accents he had been forced to listen to from dawn to dusk for five long years. The man said, turning his vidamike toward Carla so that she, too, would appear on two hundred million precision-tuned screens, “Mr. Webb, I see you’ve got a real honeycomb with you. Tell me, how does she look to you after the Ligurian _Fraislies_?” “Great--just great!” said Ricardo sincerely. He wondered, feeling a pang of conscience, just how much people on Earth knew about the _fraislies_--and how much they could accept without lifting their eyebrows. Everything was so different on the first civilized planet man had discovered. And Ricardo had discovered how thoroughly even the most pleasant exoticism can pall. He was relieved when the newscaster moved on to another returnee. Carla and he took off as soon as his luggage had been inspected and cleared. He gave her the ring which he had had fashioned of a single chunk of pale blue, luminous Ligurian jade. She kissed him again as she slipped it on her fourth finger, atop the diamond-and-platinum engagement ring she had been wearing for five years. “Oh, _darling_!” she murmured. “This is the loveliest thing! The other girls will hate me for having it--and for having you.” This time, when their lips met, he held her face upright between his palms. But when he moved his hands lower to caress her, she twisted her head again so her lips crossed his almost vertically. But so ardent was the embrace that he didn’t really care. It was pleasantly dark and warm in the aircar, and the cushions were soft, and the automatic pilot was doing all the work.... Carla’s mother, wearing a plastapron, met them at the door. She was a pale, plump woman, who twittered like a fluttering, migratory bird. She had set her face sternly against her daughter’s engagement to Ricardo but now that he had returned indisputably famous she chose to believe that the selection of Carla’s fiancé had been hers alone. Ricardo was relieved when she fled to the kitchen, twittering over a bare pink shoulder, “I had the bird stuffed with _loocoo-sran_ berries, in honor of your arrival, Ricci. Won’t that be divinely nice?” He was sure the berries would spoil his meal. If there was one thing he had developed a hatred for, beyond all others on Lri-gTu-riANa, it was the all-pervasive sweet-sour tartness of the _loocoo-sran_ ingredient in that planet’s cuisine. It was a standing joke in the Earth-colony that their hosts used _loocoo-sran_ berries to brush their teeth, so the flavor would remain with them between meals to bolster up their egos.