“Do we want them within the League?” asked Meinz. “They look like a nest of troublemakers.”

“They are. But in the long run, they can be integrated. Contact with other cultures will break down their paranoid attitude. Interstellar empires are economically unjustifiable anyway, more of a drain than a gain. If you’ve mastered faster-than-light travel, you are also able to produce just about everything you need at home, and trade for the rest. They’ll come to see that too, eventually.”

He glanced at the intercom. “I’m expecting a message hourly,” he said. “My last scout ship brought some interesting political news from Ulugan.”

“Eh?”

“Play me some chess, will you? I love dramatic revelations. You can allow me this one. It’s been a rather dreary year.”

* * *

It was only half an hour later that the ship’s radioman announced a subspace broadcast, Ulugan calling the Patrol command. Alak made a leisurely way to the communications room, letting Meinz jitter behind him.

The blue face in the screen was trying hard to maintain its old arrogance, but not succeeding very well. “Hello, Sevulan,” said Alak. “What’s new?”

“There has been a change of government in the empire,” said the Ulugani stiffly,

“Violent, I’m sure. Did you shoot Hurulta or just jail him?”

“The Arkazhik is—very ill. Frankly, we suspected he was a mental case. His rashness brought on many actions of which the new cabinet never did approve.”

“Well,” said Alak genially, “if you want to negotiate, here are my terms.”

When he had finished, and sent a representative off to meet the Ulugani delegation, he yawned mightily. “I think that’s that,” he said. “There’ll be a lot of dickering, of course, and cleaning up the military forces there will take time. But we’ve got what we were after.”

“You mean—” Meinz chuckled dryly. This success wasn’t going to hurt his own career a bit. “You mean you let them give you what you wanted.”

“Oh, no,” said Wing Alak. “I was the donor all along. I gave Hurulta all the rope he needed.”

The Sharing of Flesh

1.

Moru understood about guns.

At least the tall strangers had demonstrated to their guides what the things that each of them carried at his hip could do in a flash and a flameburst. But he did not realize that the small objects they often moved about in their hands, while talking in their own language, were audiovisual transmitters. Probably he thought they were fetishes.

Thus, when he killed Donli Sairn, he did so in full view of Donli’s wife.

That was happenstance. Except for prearranged times at morning and evening of the planet’s twenty-eight-hour day, the biologist, like his fellows, sent only to his computer. But because they had not been married long and were helplessly happy, Evalyth received his ’casts whenever she could get away from her own duties.

The coincidence that she was tuned in at that one moment was not great. There was little for her to do. As militech of the expedition—she being from a half barbaric part of Kraken where the sexes had equal opportunities to learn arts of combat suitable to primitive environments—she had overseen the building of a compound; and she kept the routines of guarding it under a close eye. However, the inhabitants of Lokon were as cooperative with the visitors from heaven as mutual mysteriousness allowed. Every instinct and experience assured Evalyth Sairn that their reticence masked nothing except awe, with perhaps a wistful hope of friendship. Captain Jonafer agreed. Her position having thus become rather a sinecure, she was trying to learn enough about Donli’s work to be a useful assistant after he returned from the lowlands.