“Good day, Captain Diaz,” he said, speaking English with little accent. “Permit me to introduce myself: General Leo Ilyitch Rostock, Cosmonautical Service of the People of United Asia.”

Diaz went through the rituals automatically. Most of him was preoccupied with how quiet this place was, how vastly quiet…But the layout was serene. Rostock must be fantastically important if his comfort rated this much mass. Diaz’s gaze flickered to the other man’s waist. Rostock bore a sidearm. More to the point, though, one loud holler would doubtless be picked up by the teleye mike and bring in the guards from outside.

Diaz tried to relax. If they haven’t kicked my teeth in so far, they don’t plan to. I’m going to live. But he couldn’t believe that. Not here, in the presence of this hooded man. Still more so, in this drawing room. Its existence beyond Mars was too eerie. “No, sir, I have no complaints,” he heard himself saying. “You run a good ship. My compliments.”

“Thank you.” Rostock had a charming, almost boyish smile. “Although this is not my ship, actually. Colonel Sumoro commands the Ho Chi Minh. I shall convey your appreciation to him.”

“You may not be called the captain,” Diaz said bluntly, “but the vessel is obviously your instrument.”

Rostock shrugged. “Will you not sit down?” he invited, and resumed his own place on the couch. Diaz took a chair across the table from him, feeling knobby and awkward. Rostock pushed a box forward. “Cigarette?”

“Thank you.” Diaz struck and inhaled hungrily.

“I hope your arm does not bother you.”

Diaz’s belly muscles tightened. “No. It’s all right.”

“The surgeons left the metal ulna bone in place, as well as its nervous and muscular connections. Complete replacement would have required more hospital equipment than a spaceship can readily carry. We did not want to cripple you by removing the bone. After all, we were only interested in the cartridge.”

Diaz gathered courage and snapped: “The more I see of you, General, the sorrier I am that it didn’t work. You’re big game.”

Rostock chuckled. “Perhaps. I wonder, though, if you are as sorry as you would like to feel you are. You would have died too, you realize.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you know what the weapon embedded in you was?”

“Yes. We tell our people such things. A charge of isotopic explosive, with a trigger activated by a particular series of motor nerve pulses. Equivalent to about ten tons of TNT.” Diaz gripped the chair arms, leaned forward and said harshly: ‘‘I’m not blabbing anything you don’t now know. I daresay you consider it a violation of the customs of war. Not me! I gave no parole—”

“Certainly, certainly.” Rostock waved a deprecating hand. “We hold…what is your idiom?…no hard feelings. The device was ingenious. We have already dispatched a warning to our Central, whence the word can go out through the fleet, so your effort, the entire project, has gone for nothing. But it was a rather a gallant attempt.”