"You just want the impossible. The others—they want little dreams we can give them easily."
There was a strain, a tension in him, in his hands, in his voice. Suddenly, his hands held her, and his face was close above her lips. "You're still young and beautiful to me," he whispered.
She turned her face away, and gazed at the tattered and splendid veils of moonlight as Deimos and Phobos neared one another, with undying eagerness to consummate the timeless ritual.
Dimly, she could hear the communal voices rising to desire.
"Twin Moons, Love Moons, whirling bright,
Bring me Martian love tonight!"
If you could expect too much from Mars, then where could one find the answer to the intangible wish? Sirius. Far Centauris. And at the end of it, the hucksters, the phony props, would be there first.
Some people should stay on Earth, she thought, those who are so hard to please. There the veils of space and time might keep the last illusions living. Once you find that even the farthest star is illusory, there's no place left to go.
His lips were near her lips. His voice was low. "You are different!" His throat trembled. "You really are. But—I wonder if you're different enough."
She was aware of the awful gnawing emptiness within her that was only intense desire too frightened to be free. And then his lips were crushing to hers and she allowed it, for she knew what was to be her only way out, and the promise of union was a haze in the room like the veils of light from the moons of Mars that joined against the starlight of heaven.
There was more than the ardent in his intensity. A kind of desperation, his desire to please going beyond the line of duty. The old consuming terror returned.