Did they also tell you Academy administrators don’t approve? That you may get docked pay or pick up a demerit from Old Gasbag? Or that Professor-Admiral Bloodsucker might do something even more painful to your tender, human necks, if she catches you down here?

Don’t care? Well, well. Such a daring lot of eager lasses and lads. And you bought the first of several rounds. So…

All right then. You’re paying. I’ll drink n’ tell.

And if you snicker at my professorial tone, well I was a lecturer up there on the hill, for many years. Not that you shavetails are in any position to judge. So just shut up and listen while this old brain calls up those ancient tracks…

Only a few human beings qualify for this job. You students, the elite of our race – (may Yah-Tze pity us) – are being trained for a difficult and dangerous task vital to the survival of our world and many others.

For those finally chosen to serve, the demands will be heavy and unending.

First – above all other requirements – you have to like demmies.

I mean really like them.

Try to imagine spending a voyage of several years crammed in tight quarters with over two hundred of those brash, rambunctious, impulsive, affectionate, abrasive and maddening creatures, sharing constant peril while daily enduring their puckish, brilliant, idiotic, mercurial, and always astonishing natures. It would drive any normal man or woman to gibbering distraction.

Against such pressures, the Human Advisor aboard a demmie ship must always display the legendary Earthling traits of calmness, reason and restraint. Plus – heaven help us – genuine affection for the impossible creatures.

At times, this fondness may be your only anchor. Your sole hope.

Everyone knows that love and hate are cousins. And so, while I remain loyal – even now – to my demmie captain and crewmates, there were days when some infuriating antic left me frazzled to the bone. Times when I found that I could fathom the very different attitude chosen by our Spertin foes, who wish to roast every demmie slowly, over a neutron star.

When such moments come, you must take a deep breath, count to ten, and find reserves of patience deeper than a nebula. More often than not, it’s worth it.

Demmies love nicknames. They have one for the human race, calling us “the Ancient Ones.”

From their point of view, it’s obvious. Not only do we live much longer as individuals, with lifespans of a hundred or more Earth years, but from the demmie perspective, our people have been roaming the galaxy since time immemorial.

Well, after all, most member-races of the Federated Alliance learned starflight from us… as demmies did, when we contacted their world, fifty-eight years after our first ships departed the Solar System.

That’s how much longer we roamed the star lanes. Fifty-eight years. And for this they deferentially call us Ancient Ones.

Sure. Why not?