Calhoun could see all this very clearly, and he assured himself that he regarded it with ironic detachment. He asserted in his own mind that it was merely the manifestation of that blind impulse to exogamy which makes spacemen romantic in far spaceports and invests an outer-planet girl with glamour. But it was something more. It was also that strange and unreasonable and solely human trait which causes one to rejoice selflessly that someone else exists, so that his or her own life and happiness is put into its place of proper insignificance in the cosmos. It may begin in instinct, but it becomes an achievement only humans can encompass. Hunt knew it--the stocky, deep-voiced despairing figure who stared hungrily for the daughter who had defied him and for whom he was an exile from all food and warmth. He flung out a mittened hand. "There!" he cried joyously. "It's them!" There was a dark speck in the blue-gold night-glow. As the sledge swept close, there were two small figures who stood close together. They defiantly faced the approaching sledge. As its drive-motor stopped and it merely glided on, its runners whispering on the snow, the girl snatched away the cold-mask which all the inhabitants of this planet wore out-of-doors. She raised her face to the man. They kissed. And then the young man desperately raised a knife. It glittered in the light of the ribbon in the sky. And-- Calhoun's blaster made its inadequate rasping noise. The knife-blade turned incandescent for two-thirds of its length. The young man dropped the suddenly searing handle. The knife sank hissing into the snow. "It's always thrilling to be dramatic," said Calhoun severely, "but I assure you it's much more satisfying to be sane. The young lady's name is Nym, I believe. I do not know the gentleman. But Nym's father and myself have come to put the technical resources of two civilizations at your disposal as a first step toward treatment of the pandemic isolation syndrome on this planet, which with the complications that have developed amounts to a Crusoe health problem." Murgatroyd tried feverishly to get his head out of Calhoun's parka past his chin. He'd heard a blaster. He sensed excitement. His nose emerged, whiffing frantically. Calhoun pushed it back. "Tell them, Hunt," he said irritably. "Tell them what we're here for and what you've done already!" The girl's father told her unsteadily--almost humbly, for some reason--that the jet-sledge had come to take her and her sweetheart--to be her husband--to the hotlands where at least they would not die of cold. Calhoun added crossly that he believed there would even be food there--because of the ribbon in the sky. Trembling and abashed, the fugitives got on the sledge. Its motor roared. It surged toward the hotlands under the golden glow of that ribbon--which obviously had no rational explanation unless somebody had made a grave mistake. But Calhoun had not. IV