Lynne, unable to adjust herself to the recklessly riotous spirit of Mars on a binge, said, “Rolf, dear, don’t you think you’ve had enough? After all, there’s a limit to--” “Enough?” Rolf interrupted her, with an incredulous grimace. “Lynne, this party’s just getting started. After we see off the brides, we’re going to settle down to some real drinking.” So saying, he pinched her, hard, where men have pinched women since time immemorial. To her horror, she found herself on the verge of tears. She was glad she could cover her weakness by struggling with an outward display of assurance into the aluminum-fabric coverall that was uniform protection against the chill Martian outdoors, and the oxy-respirator worn for occasional revivifying whiffs against the thinness of the atmosphere. She sat on somebody’s lap, securely wedged with the others into a land-runner for the half-kilometer trip to the reception hall. Around her, Rolf and the rest, joined in the rousing, ribald first chorus of _The Farmer’s Martian Daughter_, making her head ring with a volume of sound which was almost unbearable inside such a confined space. At that moment, she hated them all. Nor was her dislike merely a matter of personal pique. She had felt the malaise for some time, felt it so gradually, so far below the level of her conscious mind, that she had been unaware of its creeping progress. Like the _ping_ of an antique radar, a subconscious thought from the mind of her twin, Revere Fenlay, registered. He was thinking of his bride, Lao Mei-O’Connell, and his thought ran, _I’m glad she’s going to be away from Mars for the next ten months. There’s bound to be trouble and I don’t want her in danger--especially while she’s carrying our child._ Lynne stifled an impulse to probe Revere’s mind with a telepathic inquiry as to the nature of the danger. She decided there would be time for that after Lao Fenlay and the other brides of the season were safely on their way to the home planet. But with awareness of Revere’s awareness, Lynne realized that some of her unhappiness was rooted not in homesickness but in unaccepted telepathic fears of her own--fears whose nature she could not pin down. She probed Rolf’s mind carelessly and received a wholeheartedly carnal picture of Rolf and herself that caused her to drop that line of inquiry instantly. She was not in the mood for--what did he call it?--such _ferkab_ canoodling. At the moment she hated the man--and not the least of her hatred’s causes lay in the very inevitability of her ultimate surrender to him. The _marlet_. _Watch your language, you_ ZWIRCHY VINRAL, came his answering thought. Lynne sealed her mind as tightly as her lips the rest of the way to the reception hall.