Homeward Bound

19

With the Commodore Perry gone from the sky, with Atvar and the Americans from the Admiral Peary gone on the astonishing new starship, Home suddenly seemed a backwater to Ttomalss. Even though Big Uglies from the Commodore Perry remained behind, this was no longer the place where things happened. In ancientest history, the Race had believed that the sun revolved around Home. Males and females had known better for well over a hundred thousand years.

Even though they knew better, the idea had kept a kind of metaphysical truth ever since. Not only the sun seemed to spin around Home. So did the stars Rabotev and Halless, and the worlds that spun around them. And so had the star Tosev and its worlds, most notably Tosev 3.

No more. Now events had literally left the homeworld behind. The most important things that happened for a while wouldn’t happen on Home. They would happen on Tosev 3. Even now, not many members of the Race realized that. Most males and females went on with their lives, neither knowing nor caring that events might have passed their whole species by. Mating season was coming soon. If they worried about anything, it was getting ready for the spell of orgiastic chaos ahead.

As for Ttomalss, he did what any academic will do when faced with a stretch of time when nothing else urgently needs doing: he wrote reports and analyses of the dealings between the Race and the diplomats from the Admiral Peary. Even as he wrote, he understood that much of what he was recording was already as obsolete as one of the Race’s starships. He wrote anyhow. The record would have historical value, if nothing else.

No matter how dedicated an academic he was, he couldn’t write all the time. When he went down to the refectory for a snack one afternoon, he found Trir there ahead of him. The tour guide was in a foul temper. “Those Big Uglies!” she said.

A couple of Tosevites sat in the refectory, though some distance away. Trir made not the slightest effort to keep her voice down. “What is the trouble with them?” Ttomalss asked. He spoke quietly, hoping to lead by example.

A forlorn hope-Trir didn’t seem to notice the example he set. “What is the trouble?” she echoed at the top of her lung. “They are the most insulting creatures ever hatched!”

“They insulted you?” Ttomalss asked. “I hope you did nothing to cause it.”

“No, not me,” Trir said impatiently. “They have insulted Home.”

“How did they do that? Why did they do that?” Ttomalss asked.

“Why? Because they are barbarous Big Uglies, that is why.” Trir still did nothing to keep her voice down. “How? They had the nerve to complain about the lovely weather Sitneff enjoys, and that all the architecture here looks the same. As if it should not! We build buildings the right way, so they look the way they should.”

“I have some sympathy, at least in the abstract, for their complaints about the weather. It is warmer here than it is on Tosev 3. What is comfortable for us is less so for them,” Ttomalss said.

“I should say so!” Trir exclaimed. “The air conditioners they brought down from this new ship of theirs chill their rooms until I think I am back at the South Pole, or maybe somewhere beyond it.”

Ttomalss tried to figure out what on Home might be beyond the South Pole. He gave it up as a bad job. Trir didn’t care whether she was logical. Ttomalss said, “You see? You dislike the weather they prefer as much as they dislike ours.”

“But ours is proper and normal.” Trir was not the sort to think that several billion years of separate evolution could produce different choices. She judged everything from the simplest of perspectives: her own.

“As for architecture, they have more variety than we do,” Ttomalss said. “They enjoy change for its own sake.”

“I told you they were barbarians.” As if sure she’d made a decisive point, Trir got up and stormed out of the refectory.

Ttomalss sighed. Trir came closer to the average member of the Race in the street than any other male or female he knew. Her reaction to the Big Uglies wasn’t encouraging. How would the Race react to Tosevite tourists here on Home? Could simple dislike spark trouble where politics didn’t?

The tour guide hurried back into the refectory, as angry as when she’d left it. She pointed a clawed forefinger at Ttomalss. “And the horrible creatures had the nerve to say we were backward! Backward!” she added, and stormed out again.

“Did they?” Ttomalss said, but he was talking to Trir’s retreating tailstump.

His eye turrets swung to the Big Uglies in their specially made chairs. They’d paid no attention to Trir’s outburst. Did that mean they hadn’t understood it or hadn’t heard it? He didn’t think so, not for a moment. It meant they were being diplomatic, which was more than Trir could say. Who was the barbarian, then?

Ttomalss’ head started to ache. He hadn’t wanted that thought right now. Whether he’d wanted it or not, he’d got it.

So the Big Uglies thought Home was backward? Had the Americans from the Admiral Peary presumed to say such a thing, Ttomalss would have been as furious as Trir. The Tosevites from the Commodore Perry… Hadn’t they earned the right? From a Tosevite perspective, Home probably was a backward place. But it had proved it could prosper and stay peaceful for tens of millennia. If the Big Uglies dragged their competing not-empires and empires and the Empire into a string of ruinous wars, what price progress?

The psychologist could see what the price of progress would be: higher than anyone in his right mind wanted to pay.

But, now, he could also see what the price of backwardness was. Having moved forward technologically at such a slow pace over the millennia, the Race was vulnerable to a hard-charging species like the Big Uglies. With hindsight, that was obvious. But no one here had imagined a species like the Big Uglies could exist. We knew ourselves, and we knew the Rabotevs and Hallessi, who are like us in most ways, and we extrapolated that all intelligent species would be similar. That was reasonable. Based on the data we had, it was logical.

And oh, how wrong it was!

He glumly finished his food and left the refectory. No histrionics from him. His swiveling eye turrets noted the Big Uglies turning their heads so their eyes could follow him out. Oh, yes, they’d heard what Trir had to say to him, all right.

Escaping the hotel was a relief, as it often was. He walked down the street toward the public telephone he’d used before. Every time he passed a male or female wearing a fuzzy wig or what the Big Uglies called a T-shirt, he wanted to shout. Members of the Race had taken to imitating Tosevites out of amusement. Would they keep on doing it now that the Tosevites were no longer amusing but powerful?

He thought the Race’s power was the main reason so many Big Uglies on Tosev 3 had shaved their heads and started wearing body paint that showed ranks to which they were not entitled. Would power attract more males and females here now that the situation was reversing? He wouldn’t have been surprised. Monitoring such things would make an interesting experiment-for someone else.

When he got to the phone, he swung his eye turrets in all directions. If that ginger-tasting female and her hoodlum friends were around, he would take himself elsewhere as fast as he could go. He did not see any of them. Feeling safe because he didn’t, he telephoned Pesskrag. Impatience and worry overwhelmed the careful logic of a few days before.

The phone hissed several times in his hearing diaphragm. He was afraid he would have to record a message. But then she answered: “This is Pesskrag. I greet you.”

“And I greet you. This is Ttomalss,” he said.

“Ah. Hello, Senior Researcher,” the physicist said. “Let me tell you right out of the eggshell, we have made no dramatic breakthroughs since the last time I talked with you.”

“All right.” Ttomalss might have been hoping for such a breakthrough, but he hadn’t counted on one. He gave himself that much credit, anyhow. Science seldom worked so conveniently. “I hope you have not gone backwards, though.”

“Well, no, or I also hope not,” Pesskrag answered. “We may even have taken one or two tiny steps forward. Once we devise some new experiments, we will have a better notion of whether we have. We have opened a door and entered a new room. So far, it is a dark room. We are trying not to trip over the furniture.”

“The Big Uglies charged all the way through to the other side,” Ttomalss said. “Why can we not do the same?”

“It is less simple than you think,” Pesskrag said. “What we have are only the early hints that appeared in the Tosevite literature. I gather the Big Uglies stopped publishing after that. We have to reconstruct what they did after they stopped giving us hints. No matter how provocative the early experiments, this is not an easy matter. We do not want to waste time going down blind alleys.”

“And so we waste time being thorough,” Ttomalss said.

The physicist let out an angry hiss. “I fear I am wasting time talking to you, Senior Researcher. Good day.” She broke the connection.

As Ttomalss was unhappily walking back to the hotel, a male wearing the body paint of a bus repairer accosted him. “Hello, friend,” the stranger said, so heartily that Ttomalss’ suspicions kindled at once. “Want to buy some ginger?”

“If you do not mind selling to an officer of the police,” Ttomalss answered. The repairmale disappeared in a hurry. Ttomalss wished he were a police officer. He would have been glad to arrest the petty criminal.

Kassquit was standing in the hotel lobby when Ttomalss came in. “I greet you, superior sir,” she said, sketching the posture of respect.

“And I greet you,” he said. “I hope you are feeling well?”

“I am as well as can be expected, anyhow,” Kassquit answered. “This new Tosevite physician says the same thing Dr. Blanchard did-my gravidity seems normal to them, however nasty it is for me.”

“How are you emotionally?” Ttomalss said. “You do seem less distressed at Frank Coffey’s departure than you did when Jonathan Yeager first returned to Tosev 3.”

“I am less distressed,” she said. “Most of the time I am, anyhow. My moods do swing. The wild Big Uglies say this has to do with hormone shifts during gravidity. But I have experience now that I did not have when Jonathan Yeager left me. And Frank Coffey may come back, where Jonathan Yeager entered into that permanent mating contract. So yes, I remain more hopeful than I was then.”

“Good. I am glad to hear it. Whatever you may think, I have done my best to raise you so that you would become a fully independent person,” Ttomalss said. “I know I have made mistakes. I think that is inevitable when raising someone of another species. I am sorry for it,” Ttomalss said.

“Your biggest mistake might have been to try to raise someone of another species at all,” Kassquit said. “I understand why you did it. The wild Big Uglies did the same thing. No doubt you and they learned a great deal. That still does not make it easy for the individuals who have to go through it.”

When she’d been angry before, she’d said worse things to him-and about him. “I am afraid it is too late to change that now,” Ttomalss said. “For what has happened to you, you have done very well.” Kassquit didn’t quarrel with that, which left him more relieved than he’d thought it would.

The shuttlecraft’s rockets roared. Deceleration shoved up at Karen Yeager. The pilot said, “Final approach now. The rockets are radar-controlled. They fire automatically, and nothing can go wrong… go wrong… go wrong… go wrong…”

On the couch beside Karen‘s, Jonathan grunted. “Funny,” he said. “Funny like a crutch.”

Karen nodded. That took effort. After one-tenth g and weightlessness, she felt heavy as lead weighing more than she normally would. The rockets fell silent. Three soft bumps meant the shuttlecraft’s landing struts had touched the ground. Earth. One Earth gravity. Normal weight. Karen still felt heavy as lead. She said, “I could use that funny crutch right now.”

“You said it,” Sam Yeager agreed from beyond Jonathan.

“Are you all right?” she asked him. He was spry, no doubt about it, but he wasn’t a young man. What was hard on her and Jonathan had to be worse for him.

“I’ll do,” he answered. “We had to twist their arms to get them to let me come back here. I’ll be darned if I’ll give ’em the satisfaction of keeling over the minute I get home.”

“There you go, Dad!” Jonathan said.

The pilot undogged the hatch and flipped it open. The air that came into the shuttlecraft was damp and cool and smelled of the sea, the way it usually did around the Los Angeles International Air- and Spaceport. Karen smiled before she even knew she was doing it. To her, this was the feel and smell of home. She and Jonathan had grown up in the South Bay, only a few miles from L.A. International. “All ashore that’s going ashore,” the pilot said, determined to be a comedian.

“I’m not going first this time,” Sam Yeager said. “If I fall off the ladder, I want you youngsters to catch me.” Maybe he was trying to be funny, too. More likely, he was kidding on the square.

“Ladies first,” Jonathan said, so Karen took the ladder down to the tarmac. Jonathan followed a moment later. “Whew!” he said when he got to the bottom; full gravity was pressing on, and oppressing, him, too. His father descended then. Karen tensed to help Sam if he had any trouble, but he didn’t. If anything, he stood more easily than she and Jonathan did.

“Well, well,” he said. “We’ve got a welcoming committee. Only thing I don’t see is the brass band.”

Karen didn’t see a brass band, either. What she did see were cops and soldiers all around, pistols and rifles at the ready. The soldiers’ uniforms looked something like the ones she’d known in 1994, but only something. The same applied to their weapons. A captain-her rank badge hadn’t changed, anyway-who surely hadn’t been born in 1994 came up to the Yeagers. “Please come with me, folks,” she said.

“Like we’ve got a choice,” Jonathan said.

She gave him a reproachful look. “Do you really want to stand on the cement for the rest of the day?” She added an interrogative cough.

“Since you put it that way, no,” Karen said. “Just don’t go too fast. We’ve been light for a while.”

The shuttlecraft terminal was a lot bigger and fancier than Karen remembered. Some of the columns supporting things looked as if they’d fall down in a good-sized earthquake. Karen hoped that meant building techniques had improved, not that people had stopped worrying about quakes.

She and her husband and her father-in-law didn’t have much luggage. Customs officials pounced on what they did have. “We’re going to irradiate this,” one of them declared.

“For God’s sake, why?” Karen asked.

“Who knows what sort of creatures you’re bringing back from Home?” the woman answered.

“Isn’t that locking the barn door after the horse is gone?” Sam asked.

“We don’t think so,” the customs inspector replied. “The Lizards have brought in what they wanted here. That’s been bad enough. But who knows what sort of fungi or pest eggs you’re carrying? We don’t want to find out. And so-into the X-ray machine everything goes.”

“Do you want us to take off what we’re wearing?” Karen inquired.

She intended it for sarcasm, but the inspector turned and started talking with her boss. After a moment, she turned back and nodded. “Yes, I think you had better do that. You come with me, Mrs. Yeager.” A couple of male inspectors took charge of Jonathan and Sam.

That’ll teach me to ask questions when I don’t really want to know the answers, Karen thought. She stripped and sat draped in a towel till they deigned to give her back her clothes. She half expected to see smoke rising from her shoes when she finally did get them back, but they seemed unchanged. The inspector led her out of the waiting room. Her husband and father-in-law emerged from another one five minutes later.

“Boy, that was fun,” Jonathan said.

“Wasn’t it just?” his father agreed. “Are we all right now?” he asked one of the inspectors riding herd on him.

“We think so, sir,” the man answered seriously. “We’re going to take the chance, anyhow.” He sounded like a judge reluctantly letting some dangerous characters out on parole.

Signs and painted arrows led the Yeagers to the reception area. Waiting there were more cops and soldiers. Some of them were holding reporters at bay, which seemed a worthwhile thing to do. Others kept a wary eye on Karen and Jonathan and Sam. What do they think we’ll do? Karen wondered. This time, she didn’t ask; somebody might have told her.

Also waiting in the reception area were two men about halfway between Jonathan and Sam in age and two Lizards. Karen saw that the Lizards were Mickey and Donald a heartbeat before she realized the two men had to be her sons. She’d known time had marched on for them. She’d known, yes, but she hadn’t known. Now the knowledge hit her in the belly.

It hit Richard and Bruce at the same time, and just about as hard. They both seemed to go weak in the knees for a moment before they hurried forward. “Mom? Dad? Grandpa?” They sounded disbelieving. Mickey and Donald followed them.

Then they were all embracing, people and Lizards alike. Tears ran down Karen’s face, and not hers alone. Everybody kept saying things like, “My God!” and, “I don’t believe it!” and, “I never thought I’d see the day!”

“Where are the grandchildren? Where are the great-grandchildren?” Karen asked.

“Add a generation for me, please,” Sam said, and everybody laughed.

“They’re at my house,” Bruce answered. “I’m living in Palos Verdes, south of where your house was.”

Sam pointed at Donald. “You have a lot to answer for, buster.”

“They drugged me,” Donald said. “They held a gun to my head. They waved money under my nose. How was I supposed to tell them no?”

“He always was a ham,” Mickey said sadly.

“You always were a bore,” Donald retorted. “And they always liked you best.”

“We did not!” Karen, Jonathan, and Sam all said it at the same time. Karen and Jonathan added emphatic coughs.

Donald’s face couldn’t show much expression, but his body language did. What it showed was scorn. “I pretend to be human better than you people pretend to be Lizards,” he said.

“You’ve had more practice,” Karen said mildly.

Bruce said, “Let’s go to the cars, shall we? We can wrangle about this some more when we get back to my house. The kids will want to get in on it and throw rocks, too.” He sounded more weary than amused. How often had this argument played itself out-or, more likely, gone round and round without getting anywhere? It’s a family. Of course it has squabbles, Karen thought.

Two different sets of bodyguards formed up around them as they went to the parking lot. One bunch belonged to Donald. Celebrities had needed protection from their fans in Karen’s day, too; she wasn’t surprised to see that hadn’t changed. The other contingent kept an eye on her father-in-law. That worried her. The two groups of hard-faced men and women affected not to notice each other.

Cars reminded her much more of the ones she’d seen on Home than those she remembered from before she went on ice. The designs were simpler, more sensible, less ornate. “Are any gasoline-burners left?” she asked. Bruce shook his head. Richard held his nose. Karen wasn’t surprised. The cleaner air had made her suspect as much. She hadn’t been quite sure, though. With its constant sea breeze, the airport had always had some of the best air in the L.A. basin.

The ride down to Palos Verdes was… strange. It went through parts of town Karen knew well-or had known well. Some of the buildings were still there. Others had vanished, to be replaced by some that seemed as strange as the shuttlecraft terminal. Karen noticed Sam doing even more muttering than she and Jonathan were. He’d gone into cold sleep seventeen years earlier than they had. The South Bay had to look stranger to him than it did to them.

“It’s not even like I’ve been away since 1977,” he said after a while. “I only remember the time since I woke up in orbit around Home, and I keep thinking it couldn’t have changed that much since then. And it didn’t-but I have to keep reminding myself.”

“So do we,” Karen said.

Bruce’s house impressed her. To her eye, it seemed almost as big as the hotel where the Americans had stayed in Sitneff. She soon realized that was an exaggeration, but her son had done well for himself. So had the other people whose large houses loomed on nearby large lots. Palos Verdes had always been a place where people who’d made it lived.

Both sets of bodyguards piled out of their cars. They formed a defensive perimeter-or was it two? People Karen had never seen came spilling out of the house. Having children calling her grandmother would have been strange enough. Having grownups she’d never seen before, grownups approaching middle age, calling her that felt positively surreal.

Jonathan looked as shellshocked as she felt. “It’s a good thing they figured out how to go faster than light,” he said. “Otherwise, lots of people would have to try to get used to this, and I think they’d go nuts.”

“It gives the Lizards trouble, and they live longer and change slower than we do-and they don’t have families the way we do, either,” Sam said. “But a lot of their males and females who travel from star to star have their own clique. They understand how strange it is, and nobody who hasn’t done it can.”

“I know what I understand.” Karen turned to her younger son, who seemed to wear more years than she did. “I understand that I could use a drink.” She added an emphatic cough.

“Well, that can be arranged,” Bruce said. “Come on in, everybody, and have a look around.”

Jonathan Yeager felt besieged by relatives. His grandchildren and great-grandchildren seemed to know everything about him up till the minute he and Karen went into cold sleep. But that was almost forty years ago now, and he didn’t know anything about these people. To him, they might almost have been so many friendly strangers.

That went even for his sons. Richard and Bruce still had the same basic personalities he remembered-Richard a little more like him, Bruce more outgoing like Karen-but they weren’t college kids finding out about the world any more. They’d had all those years to grow into themselves. They seemed to have done a good job of it, but he couldn’t say he knew them. The same went for Mickey and Donald-especially Donald.

He walked over to his father, who was sitting with his legs crossed and a drink balanced on his right knee. “Hi, Dad,” Jonathan said. “Congratulations.”

“Oh, yeah?” Sam Yeager looked up at him. “How come?”

“Because of all the people here, you’re the only one who’s even more out of it than I am,” Jonathan answered.

“Oh.” His father thought that over. Then he said, “If it weren’t for the honor of the thing, I’d rather walk. Only trouble is, it’s a darn long walk back to Home.”

“Yeah. That occurred to me, too,” Jonathan said. “We’re here. We’ll just have to make the best of it. They won’t throw us in the poorhouse, anyhow. We’ve got a lot of back pay coming to us.”

“Hot diggety.” His father made a sour face. “Do you suppose there’s anybody else on the face of the Earth who says ‘hot diggety’ any more? The more I listen to people nowadays, the more I’m convinced I really do belong in a museum. Me and the Neanderthals and the woolly mammoths and all the other things you wouldn’t want to see in your driveway at three in the morning.”

Bruce’s daughter Jessica was sitting a couple of feet away. She smiled. “Don’t be silly, Great-grandfather. You can show up in my driveway any time you want.”

“Thanks for all of that except the ‘Great-grandfather,’ ” Sam Yeager said. “It makes me feel a million years old, and I’m not-quite.”

“What do you want me to call you?” she asked.

“How about Sam? It’s my name.” Jonathan’s father pointed at him. “You can call this guy Gramps, though.”

“Thanks a lot, Dad,” Jonathan said.

“Any old time, kiddo-and I do mean old,” his father answered.

Jessica looked from one of them to the other. Amusement danced in her eyes. She was somewhere in her thirties: a blue-eyed blonde with strong cheekbones. Jonathan tried to see either himself or Karen in her face, and didn’t have much luck. Maybe she looked like her mother, the woman Bruce hadn’t stayed married to. She said, “You’re quite a pair, aren’t you?”

“You should see us on TV,” Jonathan said. “We’re funnier than Donald, and we don’t have to paint ourselves into tuxes.”

“Nope-just corners,” Sam agreed. Jessica made a face at him. He got to his feet. “I need another drink.”

“Now that you mention it, so do I.” Jonathan followed him over to the bar. His father picked up a bottle of bourbon. He poured some into a glass, then added ice cubes. “Alcohol with flavorings I like, by God. And I don’t have to get into a brawl with the Lizards to get ice.” He raised his glass. “Mud in your eye.”

Jonathan built a drink for himself. “Same to you,” he said. They both sipped. Jonathan wasn’t so sure he liked bourbon any more. It did taste like home, though: home with a small h.

Richard came over to the two of them. He made his own drink-something with rum and fruit juice. Jonathan wouldn’t have wanted it anywhere this side of a beachfront hotel at Waikiki. But his son was entitled to his own taste. Richard kept staring now at Jonathan, now at Sam. “This is crazy. You’re going to laugh at me,” he said, and added an emphatic cough. “You both look just the way I remember you, but it’s been a hell of a long time.”

“You were a little kid when I went on ice,” Sam said accusingly. “How come you’re not a little kid any more?”

Richard hadn’t been a little kid when Jonathan went into cold sleep. But he hadn’t been older than his father by body time, either. They didn’t look like father and son these days. They looked like brothers, and Richard was definitely the more weathered of the two. Jonathan knocked back a good slug of bourbon. “I’m not laughing at anything right now,” he said. “It’s just starting to hit me that the country I grew up in-the country where I lived my whole life-is almost as alien to me as Home. Everything here seems strange to me, so I don’t know why I ought to be surprised that I seem strange to you.”

“That’s… fair enough, I suppose,” his son said. “I hadn’t really thought about what all this must be like from your point of view.”

Jonathan put a hand on his father’s shoulder. “It’s got to be even weirder for Dad. He went into cold sleep quite a while before I did.”

“That’s only half the problem,” Sam said. “The other half is, I was born quite a while before you were. All my attitudes are ancient history now. I’ve tried to outgrow some of the worst ones, but they’re still there down underneath. I felt like a geezer in 1977. I’m worse than a geezer now. Christ! It’s more than a hundred years since I tore up my ankle and turned into a minor leaguer for good. That was in Birmingham, Alabama, and nobody thought anything of it when they made colored people sit by themselves in the lousy seats.”

“Blacks,” Jonathan said.

“African Americans,” Richard said. Jonathan shook his head, like a man in a bridge game who’s been overtrumped.

Three generations of Yeagers. Three men whose births spanned more than sixty years. By body time, fewer than twenty years separated them, and the one who should have been youngest was in the middle. Jonathan shook his head again. Such things shouldn’t have been possible. Here they all were, though.

Richard’s wife came over to them. Diane Yeager was younger than Jonathan’s son-say, about the same age he was himself. She didn’t say a whole lot, but Jonathan got the impression she was hard to faze. “Family group,” she remarked now, her eyes going from her husband to his father to his grandfather.

“Family group,” Jonathan agreed. He suspected his voice sounded ragged. So what, though? By God, hadn’t he earned the right to sound a little ragged just now?

“Three generations for the price of one,” she said. “You could all be brothers.”

By body time, they could have been. Not many sets of brothers were spread as far apart as the three of them, but some were. And yet… “You’d have to go some to find three brothers as different as we are,” Jonathan said.

“Can’t be helped,” Richard said. “We are what we are, that’s all, and we have to make the best of it.”

“ ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves,’ ” Sam quoted. “Except that’s not true, not this time. If it weren’t for Tau Ceti, everything would be normal.” He sipped from his drink. “Of course, I wouldn’t be here, so I’m not about to complain.”

Strictly by the calendar, Jonathan would turn ninety in December, so he wasn’t about to complain, either. “Can you imagine how strange it would be if there were thousands and thousands of families trying to sort this out?” He pointed to his father. “How much fun are you going to have trying to renew your driver’s license when you tell a clerk-or more likely a computer-you were born in 1907?”

Sam winced. “Hadn’t thought of that. Yeah, it ought to make some electronics start chasing their own tail.”

“How do the Lizards handle it?” Diane asked, and started to laugh. “I’ve got three of the world’s best experts here to answer my question.”

Richard Yeager looked to his father and grandfather. “I defer to the people who’ve been on the spot, which I haven’t.”

“You know more about it than we do, son,” Jonathan said. “We were either stuck in a hotel trying to be diplomats or we were out being tourists, which isn’t exactly a scientist’s dream, either.”

“That’s about the size of it,” his father agreed. “Besides, since your wife asked, only fair you should show off in front of her. I’m sure she’s never heard you do it before.”

Diane Yeager snickered. Richard turned red. He said, “The two big things the Race has going for it are its longer lifespan and its different social structure. It doesn’t have families to be disrupted the way we do. We were talking about this in the car on the way down, in fact.”

“Truth,” Jonathan said in the Race’s language. He went on, “Even so, there’s a clique of star travelers who stick together because they aren’t so connected to the present. I suppose that would have happened with us, too.”

“Probably,” Richard said. “Better this way, though. Now we don’t have to spend some large part of our loved ones’ lifetime traveling from star to star.”

Before Jonathan or his father could add anything to that, Donald came up to them. He aimed one eye turret at Jonathan, the other at Sam. “Did the two of you have any idea-any idea at all-what you were doing to Mickey and me when you decided to raise us as people?” he demanded.

“No,” Jonathan and his father said at the same time. Sam went on, “Do you know of Kassquit, the girl the Race raised?”

“We’ve heard of her,” Donald answered. “We’d like to meet her one of these days. If anybody would understand some of the things we’ve been through growing up, she’s the one.”

“She’s said the same thing about the two of you,” Jonathan said.

“The Race tried to raise a human as much like one of their kind as they could,” his father said. “We did the same thing with you. When we met Kassquit, we realized how unfair that was to you, but we were committed to doing it.”

“National security,” Donald said scornfully. He stuck out his tongue. “This for national security. You ruined our lives for the sake of national security.”

“Things could be worse,” Jonathan pointed out. “You’ve made a lot of money. People admire you. Millions of them watch you every night. And Mickey’s prosperous, too, even if he’s less public about it.”

“Yes, we have money. You know that old saying about money and happiness? It’s true,” Donald said. “All the money in the world can’t make up for the simple truth: we’re sorry excuses for males of the Race and we’re even sorrier excuses for humans. You want to know how sorry? I really do leer at Rita, because that’s what a man would do. I can’t do anything with her. Even if I smelled pheromones from a female of the Race and got excited, I couldn’t do anything with her. But I leer anyway. There they are, hanging out, and I stare at them.”

What could you say to something like that? Jonathan looked to his father, who didn’t seem to have any idea, either. “I’m sorry,” Jonathan said at last. “We did the best we could.”

“I know that. I never said you didn’t,” Donald answered. “But there’s a goddamn big difference between that and good enough.” He used an emphatic cough. It didn’t sound like the one an ordinary Lizard would have made. He had most of the same accent a human English-speaker would have. All by itself, that went a long way toward proving his point.

Jonathan wondered again if coming home had been such a good idea after all.

Of all the things Glen Johnson had looked for while orbiting Home, boredom was the last. He didn’t know why that was so. He’d spent a lot of time on the Lewis and Clark bored. Maybe he’d thought seeing the Lizards’ home planet would make sure he stayed interested. No such luck.

This wasn’t entirely bad. He realized as much. He and everybody else on the Admiral Peary could have had a very interesting time trying to fight off missiles from however many spaceships the Lizards threw at them. They wouldn’t have lasted long, but they wouldn’t have had a dull moment.

Still… He had to fight not to go to sleep on watch. Back in the Civil War, they would have shot him for that. When he was a kid, he’d known an old man who as a boy had shaken hands with Abraham Lincoln. He wondered if anyone else still breathing a third of the way through the twenty-first century could say that.

When he mentioned it to Mickey Flynn, the other pilot said, “Well, I can’t. I had ancestors who fought in it. People were willing to have Irishmen shot to keep the country in one piece, but not to give ’em a job once they’d managed to miss the bullets. American generosity knows no bounds.”

“I don’t know. Sounds fair to me,” Johnson said.

“And what could I expect from a Sassenach?” Flynn didn’t put on a brogue, but his speech pattern changed.

“Don’t let it worry you,” Johnson told him. “As far as the Lizards are concerned, we’re all riffraff.”

“They are a perceptive species, aren’t they?” Flynn said.

“That’s one word,” Johnson said. “The Commodore Perry should be back on Earth by now. I wonder when it’ll come here again.”

“Sooner than anything else is likely to,” Flynn said.

Johnson clapped his hands. “Give the man a cigar!”

“Not necessary,” the other pilot said modestly. “A small act of adoration will suffice.”

“Adoration, my-” Johnson broke off with a snort. He started a new hare: “I do wonder when the Russians and the Germans and the Japanese will start flying faster than light. The Lizards are probably wondering the same thing.”

“I would be, if I were in the shoes they don’t wear,” Flynn agreed.

Johnson started to reply to that. Then he started trying to work through it. After a few seconds, he gave it up as a bad job. “Right,” was all he did say. Mickey Flynn’s nod announced anything else was unthinkable.

Home spun past the reflectionless windows. The Admiral Peary was coming up on Sitneff. Clouds covered the city, though. The Americans from the Commodore Perry were saying it might rain. That didn’t happen every day. Johnson hoped the Johnny-come-latelies got wet. It would serve them right. He had little use for the great-grandchildren of his old-time friends and neighbors. They struck him as intolerably arrogant and sure of themselves. Maybe they’d earned the right, but even so…

“No matter how much you influence people, having friends is better,” Johnson said.

“And what inspired this burst of profundity?” Flynn’s voice was gravely curious.

“The punks downstairs.” Johnson pointed to the clouded city where the Americans lived.

“Oh. Them.” Mickey Flynn also spoke with noticeable distaste. “They aren’t the most charming people God ever made, are they?” He answered his own question: “Of course they aren’t. All the people like that are aboard the Admiral Peary. ”

The intercom crackled to life: “Colonel Johnson! Colonel Glen Johnson! Report to the commandant’s office immediately! Colonel Johnson! Colonel Glen Johnson!..”

Over the noise, Johnson made a wry face. “And some who aren’t the most charming, too. Oh, well. See you later, alligator.” Out of the control room he went.

As usual, Lieutenant General Healey looked as if he wanted to bite something when Johnson glided into his sanctum. “Took you long enough,” the commandant growled.

“Reporting as ordered, sir,” Johnson replied blandly. “I would have been here sooner except for the traffic accident on Route 66. I had to wait till they towed away a station wagon and cleaned up the spilled gasoline.”

Healey looked more baleful than ever. He probably wasn’t thrilled at being stuck in command of the most obsolete starship the United States owned. “Bullshit,” he said, and waited for Johnson to deny it. When Johnson just hung silently in midair, Healey scowled and went on, “I need you to fly a scooter to the Horned Akiss. ”

“Sir, the Lizards will search it eight ways from Sunday,” Johnson said. “I want your word of honor in writing, in English and the Race’s language, that I’m not trying to smuggle ginger.”

“There is no ginger on the scooter.” Healey spoke in a hard, flat voice that defied Johnson to contradict him. Johnson didn’t. He also made no move to leave the commandant’s office. He kept waiting. After some dark mutters, Healey grabbed an indelible pencil-much more convenient in weightlessness than pens, which needed pressurized ink to work-and wrote rapidly. He scaled the sheet of paper to Johnson. It flew through the air with the greatest of ease. “There. Are you satisfied?”

To fit his personality, Healey should have had handwriting more illegible than a dentist’s. He didn’t; instead, it would have done credit to a third-grade teacher. The commandant’s script in the language of the Race was just as neat. Johnson carefully read both versions. They said what he wanted them to say. Try as he would, he found no weasel words. “Yes, sir. This should do it. I’ll take it with me to the scooter lock.”

“When they retire this ship, Colonel, I’ll no longer have to deal with the likes of you,” Healey said. “Even growing obsolete has its benefits.”

“I love you, too, General.” Johnson saluted, then brachiated out of the commandant’s office.

As usual, he stripped down to T-shirt and shorts so he could put on his spacesuit. When he stuck the folded piece of paper in the waistband of the shorts, the technician on duty at the lock raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?” he asked. “Love letter to a Lizard?”

“Oh, yeah,” Johnson agreed. “Their eye turrets drive me nuts.” He sighed, as if in longing. The tech snickered.

After boarding the scooter, he ran through the checklist. The technician had already cleared everything. Johnson did it anyhow. The technician wasn’t going to take the scooter out into hard vacuum, and he was. Everything checked green. He passed the word to the tech, who opened the outer door to the air lock.

Johnson used the scooter’s attitude jets to ease the little rocketship away from the Admiral Peary. Before firing up the main engine, he called the Horned Akiss to make sure he was expected. Healey hadn’t said word one about that.

But the answer came back in the language of the Race: “Yes, scooter from the Tosevite starship. We await your arrival. Stop well away from the ship, so that we may inspect you before you enter the air lock.”

“It shall be done,” Johnson said. That inspection wouldn’t be for ginger. The Lizards would be making sure he wasn’t bringing them a bomb. The Admiral Peary did the same thing when Lizard scooters approached. Nobody really expected trouble now, but nobody took any chances, either.

He aimed the scooter at the Horned Akiss, then fired the rear motor. Away the little rocket went. He liked nothing better than flying by the seat of his pants, even if he did have radar to help. A burn from the front motor killed the scooter’s velocity and left it hanging in space a couple of miles from the Lizards’ ship. One of their scooters came out to inspect it. “All appears to be in order,” a spacesuited member of the Race radioed to him when they were done. “You may proceed to the Horned Akiss. ”

“I thank you,” Johnson answered. “Can you tell me what this is all about?”

“Not I,” the Lizard replied. “The commandant will attend to it when you have gone aboard.”

“Have it your way,” Johnson said. They would anyhow.

Once in the Horned Akiss’ air lock, he had to get out of his spacesuit. With the heat the Lizards preferred, T-shirt and shorts had a good deal going for them as a uniform. Males and females of the Race went over the spacesuit and the scooter. He showed them Healey’s pledge. One of them said, “Very nice. We will continue the examination even so.” Not worth the paper it’s written on, he thought. If Healey had lied, though, (maybe) they wouldn’t blame the mere pilot so much.

“Everything appears to be as it should,” a different Lizard said after more than an hour. “We will escort you to Medium Spaceship Commander Henrep’s office.”

“I thank you,” Johnson said once more. For someone his size, the corridors were narrow, the handholds small and set at awkward intervals. He managed even so.

When he got to the skipper’s office, he found another Lizard in there with Henrep. The captain said, “Inspector, this is the Tosevite called Glen Johnson. Colonel Johnson, here we have Police Inspector Second Grade Garanpo.”

“I greet you,” Johnson said, thinking unkind thoughts about Lieutenant General Healey. Healey hadn’t lied to him-oh, no. But even if the scooter didn’t have any ginger aboard it this time, he was still in trouble.

“And I greet you,” Garanpo said. “I am very glad to make your acquaintance-I certainly am.” He took out a recorder, which escaped from him and floated around till he caught it again. Johnson watched with interest. A clumsy Lizard was out of the ordinary. Having snagged the little gadget, Garanpo went on, “You have flown your scooter to this ship before, is that not a truth?”

“Yes, that is a truth.” Johnson wished he could deny it.

“Well, well. So you admit it, then?” the male said.

“Why should I not? I have done nothing wrong,” Johnson said.

“Did I say you had?” Inspector Garanpo asked archly. “Now, then-did you ever bring ginger-this herb you Tosevites have-to this ship?”

“No, and I can prove it,” Johnson answered. I never knew I was bringing it, anyway. He didn’t get into that. As far as he was concerned, the best defense was a good offense: “The proof is, your males and females always inspected the scooter, and you never found any ginger.”

“Well, that is a truth, just as you say it is,” Garanpo said. “But is it a proof? That may be a different question. If the inspectors were corrupt, they would say they found nothing even if they lied. And did they not find traces of ginger on the scooter from this ship after it was returned from its exchange?”

“I do not know anything about that, Inspector, so you may claim whatever you please,” Johnson answered. Oh, my, would I have been set up with that one. “If you check your records, you will see I did not bring this ship’s scooter back here.”

“That is also a truth,” Henrep said. “It is unusual, in that this Tosevite does most of their scooter flying, but it is a truth.”

“Why did you not fly the scooter that time?” Garanpo asked.

“Because my commandant ordered someone else to do it,” Johnson answered. Garanpo was welcome to make what he wanted of that.

“Would your commandant-Healey is the name, is it not? — speak to me about this business?” Garanpo asked. He might act like a clumsy buffoon, but that didn’t mean he was one. Oh, no-it didn’t mean that at all.

“I cannot say, Inspector,” Johnson replied. “How can I speak for my superior? You would have to ask him.”

“I have seen that you Tosevites are good at hiding behind one another,” Garanpo observed.

“Lieutenant General Healey could not hide behind me,” Johnson said, which was literally true-Healey was twice as wide as he was.

“Most unsatisfactory. Most unsatisfactory. I will get to the root of this.” Inspector Garanpo used an emphatic cough.

“I wish you luck. Whatever your problems with ginger are, I had nothing to do with them.” The first part of that was truth. The second part should have been. As far as Johnson was concerned, that made it effectively true, too. Somehow, he suspected Inspector Garanpo would have a different opinion.

The imperial laver scrubbed off Ttomalss’ old body paint. The imperial limner painted on the new. The psychologist absentmindedly made the correct responses to what the two old females said, and to the guards who made as if to bar his path as he approached the Emperor’s throne. He hadn’t expected this summons to an audience, which made it all the more welcome.

He bent into the special posture of respect before the 37th Emperor Risson, whose gold body paint gleamed in the spotlights that shone on the throne. “Arise, Senior Researcher Ttomalss,” the Emperor said.

Ttomalss stayed hunched over. “I thank your Majesty for his kindness and generosity in summoning me into his presence when I am unworthy of the honor.” He probably sounded more sincere than most males and females who came before the Emperor, if only because he’d given up hope of ever gaining an audience until the order to come to Preffilo dashed out from behind a sand dune.

“Arise, I say again,” Risson told him. This time, Ttomalss did. The Emperor said, “The Race owes you a debt of gratitude for bringing Senior Researcher Felless’ alert to the attention of our physicists. We would be much further behind the Big Uglies than we are-and we would not know where to begin to catch up-if you had not. I thank you.”

“Your Majesty, I thought Felless had come upon something important. I turned out to be right, when it might have been better for the Empire had I turned out to be wrong. Felless deserves more credit than I do. She was the one who noticed what the Tosevites were saying-and then, suddenly, what they were not.” He didn’t much like Felless. He never had, even before her ginger habit made her a whole different sort of nuisance. But he couldn’t try to rob her of credit here, not when anyone with an eye turret half turned toward things could tell she deserved it.

“She will have what she deserves,” the Emperor said. “Unfortunately, the speed of light still imposes delays for us, so she will not have it right away. I hope she is still living when our signal of congratulations reaches Tosev 3. You being here on Home, I can congratulate you on the spot.”

“I thank you for the kindness, your Majesty,” Ttomalss said.

“Why thank me for what you have earned and richly deserve?” Risson straightened on the throne, signaling the end of the audience. Ttomalss made a retreat as formal as his advance had been.

Herrep, the protocol master, waited for him in the bend in the corridor just outside the audience chamber proper. “You did pretty well, Senior Researcher, especially on such short notice,” Herrep said.

“I thank you, superior sir,” Ttomalss said. “This was my first audience with an Emperor. I have long hoped for the honor, and now it is here.”

“His Majesty spoke highly of your work, and of what it means for the Race,” Herrep said. “You will, of course, be lodged at his expense this evening, and our budget naturally covers the shuttlecraft fare back to Sitneff.”

“Everyone at the palace has shown me great kindness,” Ttomalss said. That was polite if not altogether true; he doubted whether the imperial laver and limner had ever shown anyone great kindness, or even a little. The two horrid old females got their fingerclaws on him again after he turned away from the protocol master. The laver cleaned off the special body paint suppliants wore before the Emperor; the limner replaced Ttomalss’ usual paint. She did it perfectly, without checking any reference books. Ttomalss wondered how many different occupations and ranks she knew. Had she not intimidated him so much, he might have asked.

The hotel put to shame the one in Sitneff in which Ttomalss and the American Big Uglies were staying. The refectory was as fine as any in which Ttomalss had ever eaten. The sleeping mat in his room was almost as soft as a squashy Tosevite bed; it stopped just this side of being too soft. The psychologist wouldn’t have minded spending much more time there.

He had an excellent breakfast the next morning. The ippa-fruit juice was as tangy as any he’d ever tasted. A car from the palace waited outside the lobby to whisk him to the shuttlecraft port. As he got out, he remarked to the driver, “I could get used to feeling important.”

She laughed. “You are not the first who has had an audience to tell me that.”

“No, I do not suppose I would be.” Had Ttomalss come to Preffilo just a little earlier, he likely would have mated with her. But the season was over, and he could think clearly again.

Flying back to Sitneff was routine. He wondered how many shuttlecraft he’d flown in over the years. He couldn’t begin to guess. A lot-he knew that.

He wondered why he bothered going back to the hotel. Nothing of substance was happening there these days. The wild Big Uglies were just waiting for the Commodore Perry to get back so they could finish rubbing the Race’s snout in its inferiority. To them, he was just another male. Just another Lizard, he thought; the Tosevites had an insulting nickname for his folk, as the Race did for them.

But sitting in the lobby was the shuttlecraft pilot the Americans had brought back to Home from Tosev 3. She got up and came over to him. “I greet you, Senior Researcher,” she said.

“And I greet you,” Ttomalss answered. “Can I do something for you?”

Nesseref started to make the negative gesture, but checked herself. “Maybe you can,” she said. “Can we talk for a while?”

“I am at your service,” Ttomalss said. “Shall we go to the refectory and eat while we talk? I had a snack in the shuttlecraft port, but I could do with a little more.”

What he ordered here wouldn’t be as good as what he’d had in the hotel in Preffilo. He sighed. He wasn’t rich enough to eat there very often. He and Nesseref both chose zisuili cutlets-hard to go wrong with those. The shuttlecraft pilot said, “The American Tosevites do at least try to act civilized. What will become of us if the Deutsche learn to travel faster than light before we do?”

“You are not the only one to whom this unpleasant thought has occurred,” Ttomalss said. “I do not believe anyone has a good answer for it.”

“This is also my impression,” Nesseref said. “And it worries me. The Americans, as I say, do make an effort. When the Deutsche find a group they do not care for, they set about exterminating it. I have seen this at first hand, living as I did in the part of the main continental mass called Poland.”

“My memory of Tosevite geography is not all it might be,” Ttomalss said.

“The point is that Poland borders the Reich, ” Nesseref said. “It also has a large number of Jews living in it. You are familiar with the Tosevite superstition called Judaism, and with how the Deutsche react to it?”

“Oh, yes.” Ttomalss used the affirmative gesture. “That was one of the first great horrors the conquest fleet found on Tosev 3.”

“If the Deutsche had it in their power, they would do the same to us,” Nesseref insisted. “And if they can travel faster than light, they gain that power. They could appear out of nowhere, bombard one of our worlds, and flee faster than we could follow.”

“Our defenses are ready here,” Ttomalss said. “We have sent messages to Rabotev 2 and Halless 1, ordering them to prepare themselves. I suppose we could also send ships to help them, though they would take twice as long as the messages to arrive. What we have the technology to do, we are doing.”

“I can only hope it will be enough, and done soon enough,” Nesseref said, and then paused while the server set cutlets in front of Ttomalss and her. After the male left, she continued, “I had a friend who was a Jew-a Tosevite male named Mordechai Anielewicz. He had been a guerrilla leader when the conquest fleet came, sometimes opposing the Deutsche, sometimes opposing the Race. He eventually decided he could trust us. He never trusted them. Now his grandchildren are fully mature, but they like the Deutsche no better, and I cannot blame them.”

“The Jews are unlikely to be objective,” Ttomalss pointed out after swallowing a bite of zisuili meat. It was… all right. “They have no reason to be.”

“Truth-but the behavior of the Deutsche leads me to mistrust them, too.” Nesseref also took a bite. She ate with more enthusiasm than Ttomalss felt. “Do you recall the Deutsch pilot who attacked your ship during the war between the Reich and the Race? I flew him back down to Tosev 3. His name was Drucker.”

“I did not recall the name. I recall the Big Ugly.” Ttomalss used an emphatic cough. “What about him?”

“His hatchling belonged to one of the bandit groups the Deutsche set up after their defeat to resist the Race covertly,” Nesseref said.

“Wait.” Ttomalss let out a sharp hiss. “There was a Big Ugly called Drucker who served as the Reich ’s minister for air and space when the Deutsche began to admit they had such a position again.”

“That is the same male,” Nesseref said. “He was good at what he did, and cautious about putting his fingerclaws where they did not belong. His hatchling later rose to a high rank in the military of the Reich. ”

“A pity the Deutsche never quite gave us the excuse to suppress them altogether,” Ttomalss said.

“A great pity,” Nesseref agreed. “But then, one could say the same about the rest of the Tosevites. They were trouble enough when they managed to come to Home by any means at all. Now that their technology has got ahead of ours…” She didn’t go on. She didn’t have to, either.

Ttomalss made the affirmative gesture. He said, “We are doing what we can to catch up with them.” He didn’t go on, either. The wild Big Uglies were too likely to monitor what went on in the refectory.

Nesseref might not have realized that. But she did grasp the problem facing the Race, for she asked, “Can we endure until we do?”

“I hope so,” Ttomalss answered. “As you say, the Americans do approach civilization, at any rate.” He didn’t think the Big Uglies would be offended to hear that. They already knew what he and most members of the Race thought of them. But, as Nesseref had pointed out, the Americans were not the only Big Uglies. “As for the Deutsche… well, if they attack us here on Tosev 3, our colony can strike back at them as soon as it learns of what they have done-and either the Deutsche themselves or the Americans would bring word to Tosev 3 before our signals got there. The Reich is not large. It is vulnerable. Its not-emperor must realize this.”

“ ‘Must’ is a large word to use when speaking of big Uglies,” Nesseref said. “But I dare hope you are right.”

“So do I,” Ttomalss said. “So do I.”

When the Big Uglies decided it was time for Atvar to return to his own solar system, they didn’t fly him back on the Commodore Perry. The starship setting out for Home this time was called the Tom Edison. That the United States had built more than one ship that traveled faster than light worried him. The Race would have refined the first one till it was exactly the way they wanted it before making more. Tosevites didn’t worry about refinement. They just went ahead and did things.

And… it worked.

He did ask who Tom Edison was. Learning that the Big Ugly had been an inventor came as a small relief. At least they weren’t naming all these ships for warriors. He didn’t know how much that said about their intentions, but it did say something.

Sam Yeager came to the hotel room where he’d been politely and comfortably imprisoned to say good-bye. “I am surprised they let you in to see me,” Atvar said. “Do they not fear you will relay the secret orders I do not have to Reffet and Kirel, and so touch off our colony’s attack on your not-empire?”

“Some of them were afraid of that, yes,” the white-haired Big Ugly answered. “I managed to persuade them otherwise. It was not easy, but I managed. We have known each other a long time, you and I. We are not on the same side, but we are not enemies, either. Or I hope we are not.”

“Not through my eye turrets,” Atvar said. “And who knows? Maybe we shall see each other again. Now that cold sleep is no longer necessary-for your folk, anyhow-it could happen.”

“Well, so it could,” Yeager said. “If not for cold sleep, though, I would have died a long time ago. Even with it, who knows how much time I have?” He followed the interrogative cough with a shrug. “However long it is, I aim to try to make the most of it. Will you do me a favor when you get back to Home?”

“If it is anything I can do, I will,” Atvar replied.

“I thank you. I think you can. Send Kassquit my best, and my hatchling‘s.”

“It shall be done,” Atvar said. “Shall I also add a greeting from your hatchling’s mate?”

Sam Yeager laughed in the noisy Tosevite way. “If you like,” he answered. “But she would not send it, and Kassquit would not believe it if she got it. The two females did not get along as well as they might have.”

“This is unfortunate,” Atvar said. “Well, I think I will send it. Perhaps being light-years apart can bring peace between them.”

“Perhaps it can,” Yeager said. “I cannot think of anything else that would.”

The fleetlord endured another ride in a Tosevite-made shuttlecraft with a Big Ugly at the controls. The hop up to the orbiting Tom Edison was as smooth as it would have been going up to a ship orbiting Home. The pilot seemed perfectly capable. Atvar was nervous even so. Tosevites just didn’t take proper care in the things they made.

But they made things the Race couldn’t. The looming bulk of the Tom Edison as the shuttlecraft approached rubbed Atvar’s snout in that. “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” a uniformed American Big Ugly said when Atvar came through the air lock. “Let me take you to your room.”

“I thank you,” Atvar replied.

“It is my pleasure, Exalted Fleetlord,” the Tosevite male said. Atvar didn’t care for the way his title sounded in the Big Ugly’s mouth. Like Nicole Nichols back on Home, the male didn’t take it seriously.

Atvar stared as he followed the guide. Not being under acceleration, the ship had no gravity, and they both pulled themselves along by the handholds in the corridors. The Tom Edison struck Atvar as being better finished than the Commodore Perry. If the Race hadn’t been satisfied with the Commodore Perry, the ship never would have flown. The Big Uglies let it go out, hoped for the best, and improved the next one. Their way produced more progress-and, every now and then, disasters the Race would not have tolerated.

“Here we are,” the Tosevite said. “This room will be yours. Please stay here until we are under acceleration. You can access entertainment in your language through the computer. Food will be brought to you. If you want any special refreshments, you may request them.”

“But in the meanwhile, I am a prisoner,” Atvar said.

The Big Ugly used the negative gesture. “A guest.”

Atvar used it, too. “If I were a guest, I would be able to move freely.”

With a shrug, the American Tosevite said, “I am sorry, Exalted Fleetlord, but I have my orders.” He sounded not the least bit sorry.

When Atvar tried the door after going inside, he discovered it would open, which surprised him. He wasn’t quite a prisoner, then. That made him decide to stay where he was. He would have caused more trouble-as much as he could-if he had been locked up. Not till later did he wonder whether the Big Uglies would anticipate that.

A day and a half later, it stopped mattering. With a deep rumble he felt in his bones, the Tom Edison left its place in orbit and began the journey out to where it could leap the gap between Tosev 3’s solar system and the one of which Home was a part. Full acceleration took a while to build up. Atvar thought he was a trifle heavier than he had been aboard the Commodore Perry, but he could not be sure.

One of the first Big Uglies he saw on emerging from his chamber was Frank Coffey. His dark skin made him easy to recognize. His leaf emblem had changed color, which meant he was a lieutenant colonel now. “So you are returning to Home?” Atvar said.

“That is a truth, Exalted Fleetlord. I am,” Coffey said. “I managed to talk my government into sending me back. I would like to be with Kassquit when my hatchling comes forth-and I have more experience on Home than anyone there now.”

While the second reason would have influenced the Race, the first was exclusive to the Big Uglies. Atvar did not know who had sired him or who had laid his egg. Except for the Emperor’s line and the possibility of inherited diseases, such things mattered little to the Race.

“It will be good, I think, for the American Tosevites on Home to have someone from your generation there with them,” Atvar said. “I mean no offense-or not much, anyhow-when I say they make too much of themselves.”

“I have no idea whether they will pay any attention to me once I get there.” Coffey sounded wryly amused. Atvar thought so, anyhow, though Big Uglies could still confuse him. The American officer went on, “My government says they are supposed to, but even with these new ships my government is a long way away.” He shrugged. “Well, we shall see what we shall see. However that works out, I am going back to Home, and I will be there when the hatchling comes forth.”

We shall see what we shall see. Atvar thought about that after he went back to his room. It was a truth, but not, for him, a comfortable one. What he feared he would see, if he lived long enough, was the ruination of his species. And he did not know what he could do to stop it.

The journey back to Home was as boring as the one to Tosev 3 had been. Part of him hoped the Tom Edison would have a mishap, even if it killed him. Then he wouldn’t have to admit to everyone on Home that he’d crossed between stars twice in much less than a year, even counting the time he’d spent on the Big Uglies’ native world waiting for them to get ready to send him back.

Was it five and a half weeks till the starship got ready to jump the light-years? Again, Atvar thought not, but he wasn’t quite sure. He had to translate the awkward Tosevite term into the Race’s rational chronology to have any feel for how long it truly was. He hadn’t kept exact track on the journey to Tosev 3, so he couldn’t properly compare now. Not keeping track had been a mistake. He realized as much, but he didn’t see how he could have avoided it. He’d assumed he would go back on the same starship, not a revised model. As the Race so often was in its dealings with the Big Uglies, he’d been wrong.

When the time for the crossing came, the captain warned everyone in the ship to take a seat: first in English, then in the Race’s language. Atvar obeyed. For most of the travelers, it wouldn’t matter. Most Tosevites felt nothing. That seemed to be true for the Race, too; at least, neither Straha nor Nesseref had reported anything out of the ordinary.

Then that turned-inside-out feeling interrupted his thoughts. It lasted for a timeless instant that seemed to stretch out longer than the history of the Empire. He was everything and nothing, nowhere and everywhere, all at once. And then it ended-if it had ever really begun-and he was nothing but himself again. He didn’t know whether to be sorry or glad.

The captain spoke in English. Atvar waited for the translation: “We are inside Home’s solar system. Everything performed the way it should have. We expect a normal approach to the Race’s planet.”

Two ships. No-at least two ships. How many more did the Big Uglies have? They surely knew. Just as surely, Atvar didn’t. Were they visiting Rabotev 2 or Halless 1 even now? If they were, they would outrun news of their coming. They would find the Empire’s other two worlds undefended. They could do whatever they wanted. Home wouldn’t learn of it for years, not unless the Tosevites themselves chose to talk about it.

We shall see what we shall see, he thought again. Whatever it was, he couldn’t do anything about it now.

He knew when the Tom Edison went into orbit around Home, because he went weightless. Before long, a Tosevite female came to escort him to the air lock. “We will take you down to Sitneff now, Exalted Fleetlord,” she said.

“I thank you so very much,” Atvar replied.

If she heard his sarcasm, she didn’t show it. “You are welcome,” she said. “I hope you had a pleasant flight.” Atvar didn’t dignify that with an answer. A hundred thousand years of peace, security, and dominance shattering like glass-and she hoped he had a pleasant flight? Not likely!

His shuttlecraft trip down to the surface of Home was routine in every way, and also less than pleasant. So was the discovery that Straha waited for him in the shuttlecraft terminal. “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” Straha said, and bent into a mocking posture of respect. “I trust you enjoyed yourself on Tosev 3?”

“Then you are a trusting fool,” Atvar snapped. “I knew you were a fool, but not one of that sort.”

Straha only laughed at him. “Still charming as ever, I see. Any residual doubts remaining? The signals arriving from Tosev 3 would kill them, if there are.”

“No, no residual doubts,” Atvar said. “They can do as they claim.”

“And that means?”

Hating him, Atvar said, “It means you are not only a trusting fool but a gloating fool.” Straha just laughed again.