'Well, I don't really know. What the hell kind of conversation is this? It's unbelievable. Are you drunk?'

'No, I've only had four glasses of wine in the past two hours. And those were in my village. I just left the festivities there, without a word, and I drove here. It wasn't just on impulse. I'd been thinking about you all day, but I had to work up my courage to the point where I could do what I wanted to do.'

He started to get up, but she pulled him down.

'Don't be a coward, my brave spaceman.'

'It's not cowardice, it's, uh, just good plain common sense, discretion. And I'm afraid I'm losing them fast. Listen, Gulthilo, this is crazy! If we were on Earth, I wouldn't hesitate a second, since we'd both know exactly where we stand. But we're on Mars, and this society is different from mine. Mine has been very permissive, but even there attitudes are changing, and things are not going to be so loose. But that's not the point. Even if you were willing to take the chance, uh, to do it just for the sake of passion... what am I saying? I'm talking like somebody in a Victorian novel! You know what I mean.'

Gulthilo stood up. Though it was dark, there was enough light for him to see that she was still smiling. If she was hurt, she wasn't showing it.

'You're wrong to believe that I wouldn't lie with you unless you were in love with me.' She paused. 'I think.'

He didn't like looking up at her, so he stood up. But he still had to bend his head back. She was so tall.

'Little black man whom I love so much, I'm going back to my village now. I may or may not see you again, though I think I will. I'd like it very much if you came to see me instead of my seeking you out. But if you do, then I'll know that you know you're in love with me.'

'You mean, I'll be asking you to marry me?' he said, hoarsely.

'Of course. You're vibrating like a plucked harp string. You're shaken, aren't you?’

She reached out and enfolded him in her arms and kissed him on the mouth. For a moment, feeling the large soft breasts crushed against him, those large soft lips against his, he almost weakened. But she released him and he stood back, her hand on his shoulder. She had a very strong grip.

'Shalom, Richard. Though I imagine you don't feel so peaceful just now.'

Laughing softly, she swayed away.

Orme expelled a long hard breath. What a woman! A lioness! And what a state she'd left him in! His groin ached; he was quivering.

On the way home he began to feel cooler, and his thoughts stopped seething. Perhaps, and he cursed his eternal suspicion, she was working for the Martian government. It had appointed her to seduce him so that he'd marry her. And if he did that, then he might abandon his Terrestrial ties, become a Martian.

Or perhaps she was supposed to seduce him and then, if he refused to make her an honest woman, as the old phrase went, he could be imprisoned as a criminal. Or perhaps...

To hell with those speculations. If she was a seductress, she certainly was not a conventional one. She could have had him if she'd really tried.

Near his house he passed a drunken half-disrobed couple under a bush. One more marriage in the making.

Bronski was sitting in the front room watching the festivities on the TV. He looked up as Orme entered but said nothing.

'You can quit worrying,' Orme said. 'Here I am, and the virtue of the native women is untouched. At least, the one you saw with me is as chaste as she ever was.'

'It would have been a damn fool thing to do,' Bronski said. 'Who was she?'

'The woman with the Gothic name. I told you about her.'

The Frenchman stood up. 'I'm going to bed. I was really concerned about you. You could have got into terrible trouble.'

'Not to mention the moral reflection on you and the others,' Orme said.

'No, there wouldn't have been any terrible trouble. All I'd have had to do was marry her. And she's certainly willing.'

'You mean...?'

'Yes. She proposed.'

'And...?'

'I turned her down, though I didn't really put it into words. I mean, I told her I didn't love her.'

'And if you did love her?’

'I don't know. If I marry her I have to convert to Judaism. Or the Martian brand of Christianity or whatever it is. You know that. Once I do that, I become a Martian. My loyalties to Earth are dissolved. At least, they're supposed to. Could I do that? I mean, turn Martian? It sounds too much like a turncoat.'

'Not at all,' Bronski said. He was smiling, caught up in a problem that probably seemed to him rabbinical.

Bronski said, 'For one thing, your loyalties are not to Earth, as you put it. They're to your nation, Canada, primarily. Secondarily, to the North American Confederation. You have no loyalty whatsoever to the communist nations. You're thinking of Earth as a monolithic entity as opposed to the monolithic entity of Mars. Mars is one, but Earth is not. You need to reorganise your thinking, not to mention your emotions.'

'What's the difference between the two?'

Bronski frowned, then smiled.

'In most people, there's none. Well, you ponder on it. I'm going to bed.'

He started towards the bedroom, then stopped.

'Say, you know when you said that you showed perception.'

'What?'

'About the difference between thinking and emotion. Or I should say, to quote you, "What's the difference?" Very good.'

Orme said, 'Wait a minute. I only said... I don't know what I was saying.'

'The basic part of you did. Good night, Richard. You should get to bed too. Tomorrow... that may be the most important day of our lives. You should be rested. You'll need all your strength, physical, mental, emotional. If there's any difference in them.'

Orme said goodnight, but he paced back and forth for at least two hours. His thoughts alternated between Gulthilo and that man who was said to live inside the Martian sun. Both offered, or seemed to offer, a new life. Yet, at this moment, both were unacceptable. And, if they became acceptable, they would present him with new problems. But any new life, however better than the old, introduced new problems.

Did he really believe in the validity of either? She might be an agent to tempt him into becoming a Martian. As for the man called Jesus, he could be a hoax. Or, if not that, something other than what the Martians claimed he was.

Whatever he was, he wasn't what Orme had expected him to be. Orme believed, or thought he'd believed, that Jesus was the only begotten son of God, and that his purpose had been determined always, from before the beginning of time. He had sacrificed himself so that all the world might be saved, might live forever in blessedness, in the ecstasy of seeing God face to face. One day, a day that had been promised for more than two thousand years, the Last Judgement would come with uttermost terror and absolute joy. And those who had rejected God would go to hell. Hell would be the realisation that God was forever denied to the damned.

But here was Jesus, not on Earth but on Mars. And he was only a man who had thought of himself, when on Earth, as the Messiah, a Jew come to restore the holy kingdom of the Jews. Very little that had been written about him in the New Testament was true.

Orme should have been shattered by this revelation. The shock had been great but not as great as it should have been. Why? Because his belief had not really been as deep and firmly fixed as he had thought. He'd paid more than lip service to his religion, but it hadn't been rooted in his heart. He hadn't really been convinced. Not down there where the genuine, the living, convictions lived and looked up through the deep at the pseudo-convictions, the half-dead, swimming in what they thought was the light. The real light was in the darkness.