On the third planet Valentine Michael Smith was not concerned with the burning issue on Mars; he had never heard of it.  His Martian keeper and his keeper's water brothers had not mocked him with things he could not grasp.  Smith knew of the destruction of the fifth planet and its emotional importance - just as any human school boy learns of Troy and Plymouth Rock, but he had not been exposed to art that he could not grok.  His education had been unique, enormously greater than that of his nestlings, enormously less than that of an adult; his keeper and his keeper's advisers among the Old Ones had taken a large passing interest in seeing just how much and of what sort this nestling alien could learn.  The results had taught them more about the potentialities of the human race than that race had yet learned about itself, for Smith had grokked very readily things that no other human being had ever learned.