There were no guarantees in life, and less in politics.

“I wish I could be more certain when a second voyage would be authorized, Admiral. But I can’t,” Weston said.

“I understand. Thankfully, however, it has been decided that the benefits of potential contact with your people is worth the risk of having some of our people caught on another world…They will want your guarantee for their safety, of course.”

“They’ll have it,” Weston replied firmly. “While I can’t guarantee that they’ll have free access to…my world…I will ensure that they are received as a diplomatic envoy.”

“That will be acceptable,” Tanner said. “If you can prepare to receive them, I will have an orbiter bring the party to the Odyssey before…ah…before you are scheduled to depart.”

Weston noted the hesitation. Establishing a common time reference was turning into a real pain. The locals used a system based on a numbering system that the Odyssey was still working on deciphering. It had apparently been created to establish some sort of common reference point among their colony worlds.

It didn’t distill down into something easily comparable to Earth time units, unfortunately.

“We’ll be waiting for them, Admiral,” Weston said.

“Excellent. Then I will let you go and see to their preparations. Good day, Captain.”

“Good day, Admiral.”

Weston turned to Ensign Lamont. “Susan…Have an appropriate reception prepared for our guests.”

“Aye, Captain,” she replied, her thoughts running back to her earlier research on diplomatic protocol.

She’d had to look that up several times over the last couple days, when it first looked like they might get such an animal aboard, and found the subject to be intensely complicated.

So much depending on cultural differences made things tricky, and she’d been tempted to go with one of the Block ceremonies for their extreme levels of, well, ceremony. In the end, though, she’d decided that simpler was better and had got together with one of the ship’s stewards and a few others to prepare.

To that end, she opened a channel after acknowledging the captain’s order and turned back to her console.

“Jackie? Yeah, it’s Susan. It’s on. You want to warn the chef? Thanks. I’ll be down in a few to double-check. Thanks.”

“Look sharp, we got another batch of locals landing,” Mackenzie said, his teeth exposed in something that wasn’t quite a smile.

The men groaned as the chief spoke, thinking about the last time.

“Relax,” he grinned. “After the last time, I think that the cap chewed their pilots a new one. We might not have to hit the collision alarms this time.”

A few men chuckled, but most of their faces were grim, just the same. Flight deck people had a dangerous-enough task when dealing with pilots who took their job seriously, and whether the locals realized it or not, most of the men on the deck considered their flying to be well up in the “hotdog” category.

On any carrier, let alone one in the vacuous environment of space, trust was integral to the smooth operation of the flight deck. The pilots had to trust the deck crew, and the deck crew had to trust the pilots. A break anywhere in the line could cost lives, either through bad communication or, in the worst situations, intentional misdirection.