"We wrinkle easily here on Mars," he smiled. "You'll not stay long enough to know." And his eyes, sweeping her lace-sheathed body, assured her she need not fear wrinkles at the moment. She smiled. "We sail for Triton on my yacht tomorrow. There's just time for a visit to the Battan caves before I must return to N'Yott for the opening of the fall sessions." "Those are dangerous parts," he warned. "Your party is very small." "We have good men," she laughed, eyeing him curiously. "You know that area?" "If I say I do, will you construe my answer aright?" was his cool rejoinder. She rose to the bait. "Are you afraid?" "I have been called rash ere now." Her eyes glowed up into his. "Should I challenge you, Captain Thorne? Beg you to accompany us?" His lips hardened and she felt the spring-steel body stiffen. "I am not on display, Miss Chanler. Not even for you." Her smile faded and she drew away, moving from the hall out upon a deep-niched balcony overlooking the restless Nergal Sea and the nodding Martian ships swaying on the moon-dappled roadstead. The towers of Vulhan City lay about them, dark shadows in the ultramarine of the night, for these Martian cities were not air-domed. Her eyes sought his, not lightly. "You think I ask selfishly, Captain Thorne. You are right. But not as you think. If I ask you to accompany me for a short cruise, though it be on a flimsy pleasure-yacht, it is not to exhibit you as some glittering prize of the light social whirl I inhabit, believe me. I know your story, of course. One of my duties concerns aspects of public health and I've a bill hearing designed to relieve some of the handicaps space-sick fliers labor under. You are living proof they can overcome the handicaps of disease or drink or drugs. I speak frankly, you see. Figures and charts put the Council nodding. Your name will not." "I see," he slowly agreed. He looked away. She had shown him the strength beneath her loveliness. "You alone cannot abrogate the old laws forbidding t'ang addicts, cured or not, returning to Earth," he countered. "I can try," she insisted. "I like this position, Captain Thorne, to keep it I have to earn my salary, and social legislation is the coin I pay into the treasury." She laughed, shaking her long black hair about her gleaming bare shoulders. "I have been frank with you, sir. Will you come?" "You make it a duty," he protested. His slow smile swept her lithe beauty in the moonlight as the music rose again to draw them within the tall white palace. II Before dawn Thorne stood quietly on the airport basin, hands buried in the fur of his lined white jacket. As he gave the attentive stewards last-minute instructions for the care of his own space-ship, _Warrior_, lying in her berth not far away, he watched for his own party. Faint lines troubled his forehead.