The man in the azure jumpsuit was waving his hands as he spoke. Ryo thought he could be very fluent in Low Thranx. The human was short and corpulent. His hair was completely white. It descended in waves down his collar. His pink forehead gleamed in the light, almost shiny enough to pass for stained chiton. If I were to press on it, Ryo reminded himself, my finger would not slide off as is normal but would move inward until encountering bone. He shuddered slightly and doubted he would ever grow used to the idea of wearing one’s body outside one’s skeleton.

Though he possessed only half the requisite number of limbs, in his metallic attire the man looked very much like a Thranx. He was a part of the hierarchy of the human government, a Secretary of something. His position was not as high as they’d hoped for, but Sanchez and Bonnie had assured Ryo that it was substanial enough. His arrival on Centaurus V, though at night and in comparative secret, had caused something of a stir on that world.

Several others had come with him or ahead of him, traveling the long way from distant Earth to C-V and then out to the system border station slowly orbiting C-Vn. From there they had been escorted by shuttle to the wardroona of the Seeker. Sanchez and her associates, despite repeated assurances of noninterference from Davis and Dr. Rijseen, had chosen to remain on board and in free space. It helped, the captain explained, their peace of mind.

Rijseen was also present. So were Sanchez and Bonnie. The others were monitoring ship functions—and other items of interest. Outside the observation port that dominated the wardroom lay the cold dark mass of Centaurus VII, the faint disk of the station itself, and two much smaller spots of light that Sanchez and Taourit had assured Ryo were warships.

They did not seem to worry the Seeker’s captain, who was confident the ship could engage its Supralight drive before either of those motionless warcraft could do her any damage. The warcraft were present mostly to make an impression, though whether on Ryo, his human friends, or the visiting dignitaries was hard to say. They could not engage their own drives in their present position without destroying the C-VII station and its five thousand inhabitants.

Debate proceeded in the wardroom of the Seeker in an atmosphere of cordial uncertainty.

“Of course, I have no authority to commit my people to any kind of formal treaty,” Ryo was saying. “I admit that as a representative of my species I stand here unappointed and unanointed. But from all I have observed, all I have experienced, I believe an alliance between our peoples not merely to be desirable but vital.”