The Olyix had made a considerable effort to make their human visitors feel at home. Our quarters were on a terrace in the first biochamber; from the outside they looked like rather glamorous yurts. Instead of using a heavy fabric over the frame, the Olyix employed their ubiquitous wood in thin planks, laying them over a geodesic frame like tiles on a roof. Furniture, too, was all solid chunks of wood, its smooth contours making the pieces resemble a collection of slightly surrealist sculptures. Orchid-like plants had coiled their rubbery roots along the ceiling struts, dangling clusters of dark-shaded alien flowers above my head. At least their perfume was sweeter than the spice that hung thick in Salvation’s atmosphere.

Eol-2 did a perfect host imitation and left us to “settle in” before the tour began. I unpacked my washbag and went into the curtained-off bathroom section. A peripheral ran a fast scan for electronic surveillance, drawing a blank. I hadn’t expected any. The Olyix favored biotechnology solutions.

The yurt furniture might have been Olyix wood, but the shower, bath, toilet, and basin were all imported from Earth, which was quite a relief. I took my shirt off, washed my torso, and sprayed on a hefty dose of cologne. Somehow I carelessly managed to miss myself quite a lot with the spray. Then I killed time for a couple of minutes setting up my toiletries and filled a couple of glasses with cold water. That gave the chemicals in the cologne spray enough time to numb the neural fibers in the flowering plants on the bathroom ceiling.

Previous agents had taken samples of the yurt environment for study to prepare for my mission. Our labs had found fibers amid little cuts in the plant roots and leaves that had conductive properties. Without removing a whole plant and cutting it up under a microscope, we couldn’t say for sure what the fibers did and what kind of receptors they were attached to, but visitors seemed to be under some kind of general observation. Ainsley was pleased with that find; it was another strand of proof that the Olyix weren’t quite as trusting as they liked to project. Finding out whether that subterfuge came from a simple natural instinct to protect their biological heritage from human exploitation or they really were up to no good was the whole reason I was in the delegation.

With a degree of privacy assured, I squatted down and crapped out the biopackage I’d brought along. The human anal cavity has traditionally been a smuggler favorite for most of our existence on Earth. It made me really proud to carry that fine institution on into the starflight era. Yeah, right.