"Love, me? Me, Michel Drawers? Why, I am not handsome. I am ugly. I am not beautiful like your race. I am big and rough and hairy. How can she love a man like me? I could not even communicate by mental telepathy before I came here. I am just a man from another civilization, away because there was no place for me. How can she love me?" There was mute appeal in Drawers' voice. He didn't know that he was crying like a child. He didn't know that he had unconsciously fallen to his knees. He didn't know anything except that Persum had said that this beautiful, adorable, heavenly little creature loved him. Him, Michel Drawers, a big, clumsy oaf, without even a proper knowledge of manners or psychology. And as from the distance--clear as a bell--lovely as the strummings of a harpsichord it came to him. "Michel Drawers, I love you for what you are. For your innate goodness of soul. For your humble deserving modesty. For your mighty strength. I love you for your bigness, for your naturalness and for something else--some indefinable spark that has made our lives as one, that has caused you to search me out across the inconceivable immensity of a thousand universes. That is all I know, and one other thing. I can never leave you. If you go, I go with you." If you can imagine the emotions of a man unjustly sentenced and finally released from prison after six years of hell; if you can imagine what it would mean to have each of your faults become instead an additional virtue. If you can imagine the joy of having all of your fondest dreams come true--then, and only then, may you comprehend for one fleeting instant, the pounding chaos, the indescribable joy, the interminable relief that permeated Michel Drawers' being at that moment. Those two hairy arms that had pounded the most savage and horrible beasts this world had ever known into bleeding pulp slipped tenderly, reverently about the exquisite form of Trajores. And as Persum slipped discreetly away, lips closed upon lips in the manner of lovers immemorial. And the gods of fate laughed at the importance two nothings in the mighty scheme of things attached to an equally undefinable nothing called love. Now Michel Drawers lived in perpetual delirium. A delirium of unreasoning delight. He readied his "Star-Struck" for a voyage into space and a renewal of his search to find the way back--the way back with everything worthwhile to take with him. And he barely acknowledged the farewells of a fine people, so intense was his desire to leave. There was a sort of solemn rigidity in their farewell attitude. A brooding, soft, strange sorrow, and they seemed to wonder, too, to wish as well, thoughts they dared not express. To see their great dream for the reuniting of the cities come crashing down; to view their momentary gains as a hollow mockery in the years to come.