of dawn, his bony arms crushed her to him in a clasp that sent the universe exploding in one solid bath of pure, nutrient energy.

His pores opened, and he drank—for one micro-second, two micro-seconds, three, four, five—and suddenly he found himself reeling into the stratosphere, up, up, out of the cloying air into the comfortable, naked void, trailing neutrons, extravagantly, strewing protons, hiccoughing electrons. At last he stabilized his mass-energy ratio, drew in his peripheral photons and shimmered to a trembling focus.

Instantly he was surrounded with Vegans, chittering with curiosity, dipping and oscillating their silvery disks in the raw, unfiltered light of the yellow sun.

"Did you learn anything?"

"A little."

"Did you—metamorphose as a native?" they asked expectantly.

"I did," he admitted reluctantly.

"Well, tell us about it. All about it!"

"I was accused of murder, tried in a court of law, convicted, sentenced to death and executed."

"Irrelevant," a Vegan snapped. "Tell us about the two categories. Did you find out about that?"

"Yes."

"Is there a significant difference?"

"They call it sex," the Sirian temporized.

"Come, come, delete the alien terminology."

"There are men—and there are women," he said, striving to gather his thoughts and his dignity about him. It was no use. The patina of his vastly expanded corona was a dead, pink giveaway. "Just one minute ago," he confessed, "I was a man, juxtaposed with a woman, exploring the differences between the categories."

"Were the differences important? Significant?"

"To the humans, very!" He tried to sound detached.

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