The generators of the Starfish hammered through the silence that hung between us. I had never before been touched emotionally, myself, by anything Martian. And here, suddenly, I was a hapless party to a certain tragedy—all the more tragic because it was based on mores I did not understand entirely, or sympathize with.
"Maybe we can help her avoid dishonor?"
Deborah shrugged. "She will, in any event, confess to having petitioned us into helping her. The Martians do not dissemble. That will be enough to condemn her."
I shook myself out of a peculiar gloom. "There may be a way." I said, but I doubted it. "How did you ever get her on board? And where is she? And how did she ever hear about you?"
Deborah looked tired. "The plan was to smuggle her aboard in my portable developing unit; it worked out very smoothly. I don't know how she heard about me. I wish she hadn't."
"That makes two of us," I muttered. "Deborah?"
Her mouth shook a little. "Yes, Steve, I know." Her voice was a register lower and all but inaudible. "I'm glad I can count on you, you louse."
Something pretty incredible was happening to us. In spite of the way she phrased it she was suddenly not out there striding along manfully by herself, any more. Nor had she ever been. To have her suddenly lapse atavistically into a woman instead of a termagent was more than I could handle. I, who had all but resigned myself to the inevitable, eventual appeal of one of the moronic but less assertive ewes of our society! How had Deborah been flushed through the nets and traps and conditioners of our psychologists—to land, thus, a compound personality in my lap?
Here, I thought exultantly, is no glitteringly compatible equal with every brain impulse carefully measured, and every muscle vibrating in harmony with the males on her level. But a thoroughly mixed-up female in the romantic tradition of the last century!
"You damned little fake," I said huskily.