"Basically," I said. "Racial differences on earth--between men, I mean--are so slight they don't actually matter. Some people are a little darker or lighter, with maybe a few differences in features. But the Martians are so different that you can hardly find any resemblance except in psychology. The gulf is just too big to cross." "Even if we're intelligent?" "Perhaps intelligence can cross the barrier, but there are bound to be different levels of Martian intelligence. The ignorant Martians would heap indignities on us because we're a _different_ minority." "You have it all figured out, haven't you, Bill Drake?" she asked, leaning back in her seat. We had removed our helmets--they weren't necessary in the car--and her hair, beautiful and now grown out from the mannish bob she'd worn when she left the earth, fell nearly to her shoulders. "I suppose you are insecure because we're in an environment so utterly strange and unreal that we can hardly convince ourselves we're living in it." "I'll admit that sometimes I think I'm in a dream world," I said, "and I'd like to be surrounded by things I'm used to. But I have confidence in myself to pull through. I like self-confidence. It's something you can have in yourself, which nobody else may have in you." "But some things are the same," she said quietly. "The very things I didn't want to bring along with us. And I don't mean self-confidence." I glanced in her direction. Her eyes were closed, her lips looked soft and her body yielding. "Such as?" I asked. "Morrie mentioned it," she said. Now I knew what she was talking about. I took a mental grip on myself. Morrie went off his rocker. I'd stay sane. It'd be a tough fight but-- "Did you say something, Bill?" she said, opening her eyes. I hadn't said anything. She went on: "Morrie said he was a man and I was a woman. That's something that exists on earth and it existed in space. You are a man and I am a woman here, Bill." "Damnit, we agreed--" "Bill Drake," she said. "Let's just say the agreement was made years ago and the statute of limitations has caught up with it. To hell with the agreement. In those bygone days I thought a trip to Mars was a career. I'm a woman, Bill Drake. That's my real career." I braked the car, stopping in the middle of the big, red desert. There, millions upon millions of miles from that little planet where we had been married, I took her in my arms. My lips tasted hers and we clung to each other. The damned spacesuits bothered us. I fumbled with hers and then with my own, and finally we shed them. A long time later, we remembered we still had a job to do and we went on our way again. We reached Chalus, as deep as the Lacus canal, but containing more water--it was half as wide as the Hudson.