To be strictly accurate--there was only one lizard. It was thrashing wildly about in the metallic net at her back, the glow from the stationary lure-light giving it the aspect of some fiery monster which she had enticed from its cave by her beauty, and trapped at the risk of her life. As I returned her stare she blinked in amazement, then laughed outright, the gulfs between us dissolving in a sudden, warming intimacy that was like nothing I'd ever known before. To keep the scales from dipping too cruelly to her side I threw in everything I had that could be weighed and measured. Mother Earth still gives her sons a good start physically. Surely I was big and strong enough to please her, with a grip no man could break. Furthermore, I knew how to look after myself. I'd been born and bred to the thunder of primitive rocket jets, and I could walk any jungle like a native, bargain and hold my own. I was a man who would fight tooth-and-nail to justify what I was and always would be at heart--an Earthborn trader. We of Earth are traders still! We haven't forgotten how to rejoice when waterfalls crash on rocks white with foam, and the mists of morning rise clear and cold to the wheeling stars. I was prepared to tell her what that meant in terms of human dignity, human worth. I was prepared to remind her that the real target of a trader is the unknown. Everything else he does, or fails to do, is a prelude to the kind of wayfaring that brought the restless human breed to Tragor. Tragor! The scales started dipping her way, and I couldn't stop them. She was a woman of Tragor, with the star-bright insignia of her heritage gleaming on the folded-back flaps of her weather jacket. I thought of how human civilization had shifted from Earth to the stars, and what it meant to stand at the hub of the Galaxy in Tragor City. I thought of Tragor City as a man will who is eager not to remain a child in the eyes of one who has never known the meaning of childhood. I thought of the thousand square miles of research laboratories, the museums and the libraries, the sports arenas swimming in a golden radiance and the sky-mirroring splendors of the biogenetic fulfillment centers. I thought of the schools where teaching had become an exact science completely integrated with human needs. I remembered that no woman of Tragor could ever become tender and yielding without first dissecting a man. I told myself she'd see through me the instant I spoke to her. With her understanding of the conflict between the sexes the primitiveness in me would stand out like a gall blister on a sturdy oak. Right at that moment I didn't feel so sturdy. But I knew I'd have to speak first. I couldn't just stand there staring her out of countenance.