“There’s not a system in the galaxy that the Outsiders don’t know all about. We don’t know how far the puppeteer empire extended, though it was way beyond known space, but we do know about the Outsiders. They know the galaxy like the palm of their—uh…And they trade for information; it’s just about the only business they do. Ask them what’s the most unusual world they know of within reach.”

Elephant was nodding gently. There was a glazed look in his eyes. I had not been sure he was serious about seeking some unique achievement. He was.

“The problem is,” I said, “That an Outsider’s idea of what is unique may not—” I stopped because Elephant was up and half running to a tridphone.

I wasn’t sorry. It gave me an opportunity to gape in private.

I’ve been in bigger homes than Elephant’s. Much bigger. I grew up in one. But I’ve never seen a room that soothed the eye as Elephant’s living room did. It was more than a living room; it was an optical illusion, the opposite of those jittering black-and-white images they show in lectures on how we see. These clinical children of op art give the illusion of motion, but Elephant’s living room gave the illusion of stillness. A physicist would have loved the soundproofing. Some interior decorator had become famous for his work here, if he hadn’t been famous already, in which case he had become rich. How could tall, thin Beowulf Shaeffer fit into a chair designed to the measure of short, wide Elephant? Yet I was bonelessly limp, blissfully relaxed, using only the muscles that held a double-walled glass of an odd-tasting, strangely refreshing soft drink called Tzlotz Beer.

A glass which would not empty. Somewhere in the crystal was a tiny transfer motor connected to the bar, but the bent light in the crystal hid it. Another optical illusion, and one that must have tricked good men into acute alcoholism. I’d have to watch that.

Elephant returned. He walked as if he massed tons, as if any kzinti foolish enough to stand in his path would have a short, wide hole in him. “All done,” he said. “Don Cramer’ll find the nearest Outsider ship and make my pitch for me. We should hear in a couple of days.”

“Okay,” said I, and asked him about the cliff. It turned out that we were in the Rocky Mountains and that he owned every square inch of the nearly vertical cliff face. Why? I remembered Earth’s eighteen billion and wondered if they’d otherwise have surrounded him up, down, and sideways.