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but it is not mine.”
    “I understand that,” Kassquit answered. She spoke the language of the Race as well as someone with a human mouth possibly could. And why not? It was the only language she knew. She went on, “Intellectually, I understand that. But you must understand, Jonathan, that I will be sorry when you go. I will be sad.”
    Jonathan sighed and squeezed her, though he didn’t know whether that made things better or worse. “I am sorry,” he said. “I do not know what to do about that. I wish there were something I could do.”
    “You also have a female waiting for you on the surface of Tosev 3, even if she is not a female with whom you have arranged for permanent exclusive mating,” Kassquit said.
    “Yes, I do,” Jonathan admitted. “You have known that all along. I never tried to keep it a secret from you.”
    He wondered if Karen Culpepper would still be his girl when he came home. They’d been dating since high school. When he’d come up to the starship, he hadn’t expected to stay, and he hadn’t thought he would have that much explaining to do once he got back. He hadn’t really believed the Nazis would be crazy enough to attack the Lizards over Poland. But they had, and he’d been here for weeks—and he’d almost died a couple of times, too. Karen would have an excellent notion of where he was and why he’d come up here. He didn’t think she’d be very happy about it.
    “You will go back to her. You will mate with her. You will forget about me,” Kassquit said.
    She didn’t know it, but she was reinventing the lines everyone who’d ever lost a lover used. “I will never forget you,” Jonathan said, which was the truth. But even if it was, he doubted it consoled her much. Had someone told him the same thing, it wouldn’t have consoled him, either.
    “Can that really be so?” she asked. “You know many other Tosevites. To you, I am only one of many. To me, you are the most important Tosevite I have ever known.” She let her mouth fall open, mimicking the way Lizards laughed. “The size of the sample is small, I admit, but it is not likely to increase to any great degree soon. Why, if I meet the Deutsch male before he leaves the ship, it will go up from two to three.”
    She wasn’t trying to make him feel sorry for her. He was sure of that. She didn’t have the guile to do any such thing. No doubt because of the way she’d been raised, she was devastatingly frank. He said, “You could make it larger if you came down to visit the United States. You would be most welcome in my . . . city.”
    He’d started to say
in my house.
But Kassquit wouldn’t be welcome in his house. His father and mother—and he, too, when he was there—were raising a couple of Lizard hatchlings who were Kassquit’s exact inverses: Mickey and Donald were being brought up as much like human beings as possible. The Race wouldn’t be delighted to learn about that, and Kassquit’s first loyalty was inevitably to the Lizards.
    “I may do that,” she said. “On the other fork of the tongue, I may not, too. Is it not a truth that there are Tosevite diseases for which your physicians have as yet developed no vaccines?”
    “Yes, that is a truth,” Jonathan admitted.
    Kassquit continued, “From the Race’s research, it appears that some of these diseases are more severe for an adult than they would be for a hatchling. I do not wish to risk my health—my life—for the sake of a visit to Tosev 3, interesting as it might otherwise be.”
    “Well, I understand that.” Jonathan made the affirmative gesture. “But surely other Tosevites will be coming here to the starship.” Getting away from the personal, getting away from guilt he couldn’t help feeling at leaving someone with whom he’d been making love as often as he could, was something of a relief.
    “I suppose so,” Kassquit answered. “But still, you must understand, you will be the standard of comparison. I will judge every