We voted, and to my relief there was a clear majority for following the plan. Aroo abstained. I set up the committee on investigation of other cultures, then formally closed the session for the day. Halius proposed an emergency meeting for the next morning, when we’d have more information from the ship. We voted, and it passed overwhelmingly. I knew I could count on Crocus to count the votes and analyze them, but I could tell at a glance that these votes cut across our usual party lines.

So we were to follow the plan, and the plan called for us to squeeze out as much from the humans as we could before they came down. Crocus rolled down to join me and Dad where we were talking with Klymene and Aroo.

“I’m going back to talk to the ship,” Klymene said. “Will you come out to the spaceport?”

“I think that we should go to Thessaly first,” Dad said, including me in his glance.

“I ought to go to Thessaly to pay respects too,” Aroo said. “First I will hurry home, and tell our ship that you will teach us the space human language. Perhaps I can find a volunteer to begin learning it immediately. Then when I have dealt with that, I will go briefly to Thessaly, and then out to the spaceport.”

“We’ll call for you on our way,” Dad said.

“Thank you,” Aroo said, giving a Saeli sideways head-bow, and left.

“Who can we send to take a message to Porphyry?” I asked Dad.

“He’ll be here already, at Thessaly,” he said.

Here for Pytheas’s wake, of course. “We should go and talk to him now,” I said. I was tired but excited.

“You did well in the chair,” Dad said. I glowed in his approval.

“Can this really be human recontact, at last?” I asked, hardly able to believe it even now.

“It’s wonderful,” Dad said. “We’ll have so much to learn from each other. So much history to exchange. And we’ll be able to visit Earth, and their new planets. All that art!”

“No art raids on Earth!” I said, smiling at the impossibility.

Dad gave a little laugh. “I wouldn’t put it past the Amazons if they had the means. Art exchange, now—wouldn’t it be something if we could get them interested in joining in!”

“They might want to join in the Olympics and other athletic contests, and be prepared to put some of their art in as prizes,” I said, excited at the thought. “It’s something we could suggest. It’s such a great way of having it circulate.”

“And it keeps the young hotheads focused on competing instead of killing each other,” Dad said, soberly. He remembered the art raids, of course, and had lost his mother and friends to them. It was hard to keep in mind, when they seemed to me like old history.