ath of the
first uncle, and at long last the death of the second, and the lawyers
and the will and everything--the whole story, as we'd worked it out
back on the ship.

It answered everything, explained everything--even the unexpected item
of not being able to eat meat. My uncles were vegetarians, which was
certainly a harmless eccentricity compared to most of the others I
credited them with.

As a story, it was pretty far-fetched, but it hung together--and in
certain ways, it wasn't even _too_ far removed from the truth. It was,
anyhow, the closest thing to the truth that I could tell--and I
therefore delivered it with a fair degree of conviction. Of course it
wasn't designed to stand up to the close and personal inspection Larry
gave it; but then he _wanted_ to believe me.

He seemed to swallow it. What he did, of course, was something any man
who relies, as he did, on his reflexes and responses to stay alive,
learns to do very early--he filed all questions and apparent
discrepancies for reference, or for thinking over when there was time,
and proceeded to make the most of the current situation.

We both made the most of it. It was a wonderful evening, from that
point on. We went to the Astaire-Rogers picture, and although I missed
a lot of the humor, since it was contemporary stuff from a time before
I had any chance to learn about Earth, the music and dancing were fun.
Later on, I found that dancing was not nearly as difficult or
intricate as it looked--at least not with Larry. All I had to do was
give in to a natural impulse to let my body follow his. It felt
wonderful, from the feet on up.

Finally, we went back to the hotel, where we'd left my car, and I
started to get out of his, but he reached out an arm, and stopped me.

"There's something else I guess you never did," he said. His voice
sounded different from before. He put both his hands on my shoulders,
and pulled me toward him, and leaned over and kissed me.

I'd seen it, of course, on television.

I'd seen it, but I had no idea....

That first time, it was something I felt on my lips, and felt so
sweetly and so strongly that the rest of me seemed to melt away
entirely. I had no other sensations, except in that one place where
his mouth touched mine. That was the first time.

When it stopped, the world stopped, and I began again, but I had to
sort out the parts and pieces and put them all together to find out
who I was. While I did this, his ha