Down to Earth

11

In her life aboard the Race’s starship, Kassquit had known little bodily discomfort. Oh, she’d had her share of bumps and bruises and cuts-more than her share, as she saw things, for her skin was softer and more vulnerable than the scaly hides of the Race-but none of them had been bad. And, since her body reached maturity, she’d also had to deal with the cyclic nature of Tosevite female physiology. It made her resent her origins-the Race certainly had no such problems-but, with the passage of time, she’d grown resigned to it.

These immunizations brought a whole different order of unpleasantness. One of them raised a nasty pustule on her arm. Up till then, her knowledge of infections had been purely theoretical. For a while, as the afflicted region swelled and hurt, she wondered if her immune system could cope with the microorganisms from the planet on which her kind had evolved. But, after a few days, the pustule did scab over, even though the scar it left behind looked as if it was liable to be permanent.

Other injections proved almost as unpleasant as that one. They made her arm or her buttock sore for a couple of days at a time. Some of them raised her body temperature as her immune system fought the germs that stimulated it. She’d never known fever before, and didn’t enjoy the feeling of lassitude and stupidity it brought.

As a physician readied yet another hypodermic, she asked, “By the Emperor, how many diseases are there down on Tosev 3?”

“A great many,” the male answered, casting down his eyes for a moment. “Even more than there are on Home, by all indications-or perhaps it is just that the Big Uglies can cure or prevent so few of them. This one is called cholera, I believe. It is not an illness you would want to have, and that is a truth.” He used an emphatic cough. “This immunization does not confer perfect resistance to the causative organism, but it is the best the Tosevites can do. Now you will give me your arm?”

“It shall be done,” Kassquit said with a sigh. She did not flinch as the needle penetrated her.

“There. That was very easy,” the physician said, swabbing the injection site with a disinfectant. “It was, in fact, easier than it would have been with a male or female of the Race. Here, your thin skin is an advantage?”

“How nice,” Kassquit said distantly. She did not want to be different from the Race. With all her heart, she wished she could be a female like any other. She knew what such wishes were worth, but couldn’t help making them.

Except for the one that had raised the pustule, the injection for the disease called cholera proved the most unpleasant Kassquit had endured. She enjoyed neither the pain nor the fever. They seemed to take forever to ebb. If the disease was worse than the treatment that guarded against it, it had to be very nasty indeed.

Sam Yeager telephoned Kassquit while she was recovering from the immunization. Not feeling up to dealing with the Big Ugly, she refused the call. Before long, he sent her a message over the computer network: I hope I have done nothing to cause offense.

That was polite enough to require a polite answer. No, she replied. It is only that I have not felt well lately.

I am sorry to hear it, he wrote back promptly. I did not think it would be easy for you to get sick up there, away from all the germs of Tosev 3. I hope you get better soon.

I have been free of the germs of Tosev 3, Kassquit answered. That is the cause of my present discomfort: I am being immunized against them, and some of the immunizations have unpleasant aftereffects.

Again, Sam Yeager wrote back almost at once. He had to be sitting by his computer as Kassquit was sitting by hers. Are you getting immunized so you can meet Big Uglies in person? he asked. If you are, I hope that my hatchling and I are two of the Big Uglies you will want to meet. We certainly want to meet you. He used the conventional symbol that represented an emphatic cough.

Despite its breezily informal syntax, Kassquit studied that message with considerable respect. Wild Big Ugly Sam Yeager might be, but he was anything but a fool. Yes, that is why I am being immunized, Kassquit told him, her artificial fingerclaws clicking on the keyboard. And yes, you and your hatchling are two of the Tosevites I am interested in meeting.

Sam Yeager’s hatchling, Jonathan Yeager, intrigued her no end. She had never seen anyone who resembled her so closely. Living as she did among the Race, she had never imagined that anyone could resemble her so closely. He even shaved his head and wore body paint. It was as if he and she were two ends of the same bridge, reaching toward the middle to form… what?

If this world has a future as part of the Empire, she thought, its future will be as whatever forms in the middle of that bridge.

Once more, Sam Yeager wasted no time in replying. We very much look forward to it, superior female, he wrote. Shall we start setting up arrangements with the Race?

Part of Kassquit-probably the larger part-dreaded the idea. The rest, though, the rest was intrigued. And she agreed with Ttomalss that such a meeting would bring advantage to the Race. And so, in spite of a sigh, she answered, Yes, you may do that, and I will do the same. I do not know how long the negotiations will take.

Too long, Sam Yeager predicted.

Kassquit laughed. You are intolerant of bureaucracy, she observed.

I hope so, the wild Big Ugly wrote, which made Kassquit laugh again. Sam Yeager went on, Bureaucracy is like spice in food. A little makes food taste good. Because it does, too many males and females think a lot will make the food taste even better. But cooking does not improve that way, and neither does bureaucracy.

Some regulation is necessary, Kassquit wrote. She had known nothing but regulation throughout her life.

I said as much, Sam Yeager answered. But when does some become too much? Tosevites have been arguing that question for as long as we have been civilized. We still are. I suppose the Race is, too.

No, not really. Kassquit keyed the characters one by one. I have never heard such a discussion among the Race. We have, for the most part, the amount of regulation that suits us.

I do not know whether to congratulate the Race or offer my sympathy, the Tosevite responded. And as for you, you are with the Race but not of it, the way hatchlings of the Race would be if Big Uglies raised them.

I would like to meet such hatchlings, if there were any, Kassquit wrote. I have thought about that very possibility, though I do not suppose it is likely. Even if it were, such hatchlings would still be very small.

So they would, Sam Yeager replied. And I have another question for you-even if you did meet these hatchlings when they were grown, what language would you speak with them?

Why, the language of the Race, of course, Kassquit wrote, but she deleted the words instead of sending them. The Big Ugly had thought of something she hadn’t. If his kind were raising hatchlings of the Race to be as much like Tosevites as possible, they would naturally teach them some Tosevite tongue. Kassquit had trouble imagining males and females of the Race who didn’t know their own language, but it made sense that such hatchlings wouldn’t. And why not? She was a Big Ugly by blood, but spoke not a word of any Tosevite tongue.

What she did transmit was, I see that you have done a good deal of thinking on these matters. Do I understand that you have been dealing with the Race since the conquest fleet came to Tosev3?

Yes, the Tosevite answered. In fact, I was interested in non-Tosevite intelligences even before the conquest fleet got here.

Kassquit studied the words on the screen. Sam Yeager wrote the language of the Race well, but not as a male of the Race would have: every so often, the syntax of his own language showed through. That was what had first made her suspect he was a Big Ugly. Did his message mean what it looked to mean, or had he somehow garbled it? Kassquit decided she had to ask. How could you have known of non-Tosevite intelligences before the conquest fleet came? she wrote. Big Uglies had no space travel of their own up till that time.

No, we had no space travel, Sam Yeager agreed. But we wrote a lot of fiction about what it might be like if Tosevites met all different kinds of intelligent creatures. I used to enjoy that kind of fiction, but I never thought it would come true till the day the Race shot up the railroad train I was riding.

“How strange.” Kassquit spoke the words aloud, and startled herself with the sound of her own voice. The more she learned about the species of which she was genetically a part, the more alien it seemed to her. She wrote, Such things would never have occurred to the Race before spaceflight.

So I gather Sam Yeager replied. We speculate more than the Race does, or so it seems.

Is that good or bad? Kassquit wrote.

Yes. The unadorned word made her stare. After a moment, in a separate message, Sam Yeager went on, Sometimes differences are not better or worse. Sometimes they are just different. The Race does things one way. Big Uglies do things a different way-or sometimes a lot of different ways, because we are more various than the Race.

If it hadn’t been for that variability, Kassquit knew the Race would easily have conquered Tosev 3. The majority of the planet’s inhabitants, the majority of the regions of its land surface, had fallen to the conquest fleet with relatively little trouble. But the minority… The minority had given, and continued to give, the Race enormous difficulties.

Before Kassquit could find a way to put any of that into words, SamYeager wrote, I have to leave now-time for my evening meal. I will be in touch by message and by telephone-if you care to talk with me-and I hope to see you in person before too long. Goodbye.

Goodbye, Kassquit answered. She got up from her seat in front of the computer, took off the artificial fingerclaws one by one, and set them in a storage drawer near the keyboard. It wasn’t time for her evening meal, or anywhere close to it. All the ships in the conquest fleet-and now in the colonization fleet, too-kept the same time, independent of where in their orbit around Tosev 3 they happened to be. Intellectually, Kassquit understood how time on the surface of a world was tied to its sun’s apparent position, but it had never mattered to her.

She hoped she would hear from Sam Yeager again soon. Such hope surprised her; she remembered how frightened she’d been at first of the idea of communicating with a wild Big Ugly. But he looked at the world in a way so different from the Race, he gave her something new and different to think about in almost every message. Not even Ttomalss did that.

And Sam Yeager, just because he was a Big Ugly, knew her and knew her reactions, or some of them, better than even Ttomalss could. In some ways, Kassquit suspected Sam Yeager knew her better than she knew herself. She made the negative hand gesture. No. He knows what I would be, were I an ordinary Big Ugly.

But wasn’t she some of that anyhow? She shrugged helplessly. How was she supposed to know?

Reuven Russie had thought he knew a good deal about medicine. His father was a doctor, after all; he’d had the benefit of insight and training no one starting from scratch could hope to equal. And he’d attended the Moishe Russie Medical College, learning things from the Race that human physicians wouldn’t have discovered for themselves for generations. If that didn’t prepare him for practice, what could?

After his first few hectic weeks of working with his father, he began to wonder if anything could have prepared him for the actual work of medicine. Moishe Russie laughed when he complained about that, laughed and remarked, “The Christians say, ‘baptism by total immersion.’ That’s what you’re going through?”

“Don’t I know it?” Reuven said. “The medicine itself isn’t all that different from what I thought it would be. The diagnostic tests work the same way, and the results are pretty clear, even if the lab you use isn’t as good as the one attached to the college.”

“Isn’t it?” Moishe Russie’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Not even close,” Reuven told him. “Of course, the technicians are only human.” He didn’t realize how disparaging that sounded till he’d already said it.

Now his father’s laugh held a wry edge. “You’d better get used to dealing with human beings, son. We mostly do the best we can, you know.”

“Yes, I do,” Reuven said. He glanced around his father’s office, where they were talking. It was a perfectly fine place, with palm trees swaying in the breeze just outside the window; with Moishe Russie’s diplomas, one of them in the language of the Race, in frames on the wall; with shelves full of reference books; with a gleaming microscope perched on a corner of the desk.

And yet, to Reuven’s eyes, it was as if he’d fallen back through time a century, maybe even two. The plaster on the walls was uneven and rough. It was at home, too, but he noticed it more here because he contrasted it to the smooth walls of the Moishe Russie Medical College. The microscope seemed hopelessly primitive next to the instruments he’d used there. And books… He enjoyed reading books for entertainment, but electronics were much better for finding information in a hurry. His father had access to some electronics, but didn’t display them where his patients could see them. He didn’t seem to want people to know he used such things.

That was part of the problem Reuven had been having in adjusting: pretending to know less than he did. The other part lay in the patients themselves. He burst out, “What do I do about the little old men who come in every other week when there’s nothing wrong with them? What I want to do is boot them out on the street, but I don’t suppose I can.”

“No, not really,” Moishe Russie agreed. “Oh, you could, but it wouldn’t do you much good. They’d come back anyhow: either that or they’d go bother some other doctor instead.”

“I’ve been looking over the files,” Reuven said. “Looks like we’ve got some patients other doctors have run off.”

“I’m sure we do,” his father said, nodding. “And they have some of ours, too-I try to be patient, but I’m not Job. Sometimes all the little old men and women really want is for someone to tell them, ‘Don’t worry. You’re really all right.’ And”-he grinned at Reuven-“you’re a hero to a lot of them, you know?”

Reuven shrugged in some embarrassment. “Yes, I do know. I don’t think it’s worth making a fuss over.”

“I know you don’t, but you have to remember: you grew up here in Jerusalem, not in Warsaw or Minsk or Berlin,” Moishe Russie said. “Being a Jew is easy here. It wasn’t so easy back in Europe, believe me. And a Jew who walks away from something important so he doesn’t have to go worship the spirits of Emperors past”-he used the language of the Race for the phrase-“deserves to have people notice.”

“If we had advertisements, you could use it in them: ‘genuine Jewish doctor,’ I mean,” Reuven answered. “But it doesn’t make me any smarter. If it does anything, it makes me stupider.”

His father shook his head. “It may make you a little more ignorant, but not stupider. And it makes you honest. That’s important for a doctor.”

Reuven snorted. “If I were honest, I’d tell those people to geh kak afen yam.”

“Well, you can’t be a hundred percent honest all the time.” Moishe Russie chuckled, but then sobered. “And the other thing to remember is, you can’t take anything for granted. Just the other day, I found a lump in Mrs. Berkowitz’s breast. She’s been coming in here three, four times a year for the past ten years, and I never noticed anything worse than varicose veins wrong with her up till then. But you have to be careful.”

“All right,” Reuven said. By the unhappy expression on his father’s face, he suspected that Moishe Russie wished he’d found the lump sooner. Knowing his father, he’d probably been kicking himself ever since he did discover it. Reuven continued, “And it feels strange to have a chaperone of some sort in the room whenever I examine a woman, even if she’s older than the Pyramids.”

“You have to be careful,” his father repeated, this time in a different tone of voice. “I know a couple of men who ruined their careers because they weren’t. Why take chances when you don’t have to.”

“I don’t,” Reuven answered, knowing his father would land on him like an avalanche if he did. “It still seems like something out of the Middle Ages, though.”

“Maybe it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real,” Moishe Russie said. “Our Arab colleagues have a harder time with it than we do. Sometimes they can’t touch their female patients at all. They have to do the best they can by asking questions. If they’re lucky, they get to ask the woman. If they’re not, they have to ask her husband.”

“Yes, I know about that,” Reuven said. “There’s a fellow named Nuqrashi who resigned from the college about the same time I did. He’s back in Baghdad now, I suppose, getting his practice going. I wonder if he’s having those kinds of troubles.”

“Worse troubles than those in Baghdad nowadays,” his father said. “Sometimes they spill over here, too. If I never hear anybody shouting ‘Allahu akbar!’ again, I won’t be sorry.” Moishe Russie’s eyes went far away. “Not long after we first came to Palestine, I tried to help a wounded Arab woman in the streets of Jerusalem, and an Arab man thought I was going to violate her. He did change his mind when he realized what I was doing, I will say that.”

“What happened to her?” Reuven asked.

His father looked bleak. “She bled to death. Torn femoral artery, I think.”

Before Reuven could answer that, the receptionist tapped on the door and said, “Dr. Russie-young Dr. Russie, I mean-Chaim Katz is here for his appointment. He’s complaining about his cough again.”

“Thanks, Yetta.” Reuven got to his feet. As he started for the examination room, he glanced back at his father, who was lighting a cigarette. In disapproving tones, he said, “Katz would do a lot better if he didn’t smoke like a chimney. As a matter of fact, you’d do better, too.”

Moishe Russie looked innocent. “I’d do better if Katz didn’t smoke? I don’t see that.” He inhaled. The end of the cigarette glowed red.

“Funny,” Reuven said, though he thought it was anything but. “You know what the Lizards have found out about what tobacco does to your lungs. They think we’re meshuggeh for using the stuff.”

“Among other reasons they think we’re meshuggeh.” His father breathed out smoke as he spoke. He looked at the cigarette between his index and middle fingers, then shrugged. “Yes, they’ve found out all sorts of nasty stuff about tobacco. What they haven’t found is how to make somebody quit using the stuff once he’s got started.” He raised an eyebrow. “They haven’t figured out how to make themselves stop using ginger, either.”

That struck Reuven as more rationalization than reasoned defense, but he didn’t have time to argue-not that arguing was likely to make his father stub out that cigarette and never smoke another one. All he said was, “You can’t be having as much fun with tobacco as the Lizards do with ginger.” Moishe Russie laughed.

In the examination room, Chaim Katz was working a cigarette down to a tiny butt and coughing between puffs. He was about sixty, stocky, bald, with a gray mustache and tufts of gray Hair sprouting from his ears. “Hello, Doctor,” he said, and coughed again.

“Hello?” Reuven pointed to an ashtray. “Will you please put that out and take off your shirt? I want to listen to your chest.” He reached for his stethoscope, which hung beside his father’s. Even as he set the ends in his ears, be knew he wouldn’t be hearing everything he might. The Race had electronically amplified models.

He didn’t need anything fancy, though, to dislike what he heard in Chaim Katz’s chest. He marveled that the older man got any air into his lungs at all: wheezes and hisses and little whistling noises filled his ears. “Nu?” Katz said when he put the stethoscope away.

“I want you to make an appointment with Dr. Eisenberg for a chest X ray,” Reuven told him. Back at the medical college, he could have sent the man for an X ray then and there, and learned the results in a few minutes. Unfortunately, things weren’t so simple here. “When I see the film, I’ll have a better idea of where we stand.” I’ll find out whether you’ve got a carcinoma in there, or just a running start on emphysema.

“That’ll be expensive,” Katz complained.

Reuven said, “How expensive is being sick, Mr. Katz? You’ve had this cough for a while now. We need to find out what’s going on in there.” The stocky little man made a sour face, but finally nodded. He put on his shirt, buttoned it, and pulled out the pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket. Reuven pointed to them. “You’ll probably get some relief if you can give those up. They don’t call them coffin nails for nothing.”

Chaim Katz looked at the cigarettes-a harsh Turkish blend-as if just consciously noticing he was holding them. He stuck one in his mouth and lit it before answering, “I like ’em.” He took a drag, then continued, “All right, I’ll talk to Eisenberg. Tell your old man hello for me.” Out he went, leaving a trail of smoke behind.

With a sigh, Reuven ducked into his own office-smaller and a good deal starker than his father’s-and wrote up the results of the examination. He was just finishing when the telephone rang. He looked at it in mild surprise; his father got most of the calls. “Miss Archibald for you,” Yetta said.

“Put her through,” Reuven said at once, and then switched from Hebrew to English: “Hullo, Jane! How are you? So you still remember me even though I escaped? Do you remember me well enough to let me take you to supper tomorrow night?”

“Why not?” she said, and laughed. Reuven grinned enormously, though she couldn’t see that. She continued, “After all, you’re a man of money now, with your own practice and such. Since you’ve got it, why shouldn’t you spend it on me?”

Had he thought she meant that in a gold-digging way, he would have hung up on her. Instead, he laughed, too. “Only goes to show you haven’t had a practice of your own yet. How are things back there?” He still longed for news, even after severing himself from the medical college.

“About what you’d expect,” Jane answered. “The Lizards keep muttering about Tosevite superstitions.” She dropped into the language of the Race for the last two words. “I don’t think they expected nearly so many people to resign.”

“Too bad,” Reuven said with more than a little relish. “Even after all these years, they don’t understand just how stubborn we are.”

“Well, I know how stubborn you are,” Jane said. “I’m still willing to go out to supper with you. What time do you think you’ll be by the dormitory?”

“About seven?” Reuven suggested. When Jane didn’t say no, he went on, “See you then,” and hung up. Maybe if he was stubborn enough, she’d be willing to do more than go out to supper with him. Maybe not, too, but he could hardly wait to find out.

Every time Sam Yeager went to Little Rock, the new capital of the United States seemed to have grown. It also seemed as gawky as Jonathan had during the years when he was shooting up like a weed. He thought the president’s residence-the papers called it the Gray House, in memory of the White House that was, these days, slightly radioactive ruins-lacked the classic dignity of its predecessor. People said it was more comfortable to live in, though, and he supposed that counted, too.

Posters on the telephone poles outside the Gray House shouted, REELECT WARREN amp; STASSEN! They were printed in red, white, and blue. The Democrats’ posters were black and gold. HUMPHREY FOR PRESIDENT! was their message, along with a picture of the beaky, strong-chinned governor of Minnesota. Yeager had nothing much against Hubert Humphrey or Joe Kennedy, Jr., but didn’t intend to vote for them. President Warren was a known quantity. At Sam’s stage of life, he approved of known quantities.

A receptionist at the front entrance to the residence nodded politely to him as he came up. “May I help you, Lieutenant Colonel?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.” Yeager gave his name, adding, “I have an eleven o’clock appointment with the president.”

She checked the book in front of her, then looked carefully at the identification card he showed her. When she was satisfied his image matched his face, she nodded again. “Go to the waiting room, sir. He’ll be with you as soon as he finishes with the Russian foreign commissar.”

“Thanks,” Yeager said, and grinned in bemusement as he headed down the hall. The Russian foreign commissar, then him? He’d never expected to be mentioned in the same breath with such luminaries, not back in the days when he was bouncing around the mid- to lower minor leagues. Then his idea of big shots was fellows who’d had a cup of coffee in the majors before dropping down again.

He grinned once more when he got to the waiting room. One of the things set out for people, along with Look and U.S. News and Interspecies Report, to read was the Sporting News. The Los Angeles Browns were two days away from squaring off with the Phillies in the World Series. His heart favored the Browns. If he’d had to put money on the Series, though, he would have bet on the Phils.

I might have made it to the big time as a coach, he thought. I might have. If I had, I might have been standing in the first-base box two days from now. Instead, he was sitting here waiting to talk with the president of the United States. It wasn’t what he’d had in mind as a younger man, but it wasn’t so bad, either.

Out came Andrei Gromyko. He didn’t look happy, but he had the sort of face that wasn’t made for looking happy. “Good day,” he said to Yeager in excellent English. He strode out of the room without waiting for a reply.

In his wake, a flunky in an expensive suit emerged from President Warren’s office. He gave Sam a smile wide enough to make up for the one he hadn’t got from the Russian. It also made him want to check to be sure his wallet was still in his hip pocket. The flunky said, “The president will see you in a few minutes. He wants to finish writing up his notes first.”

“Okay by me,” Sam answered-as if Warren needed his permission to do some work before summoning him. He returned to the Sporting News. Like Budweiser beer, it had survived the Lizard occupation of St. Louis.

He almost went past the necrology listing for Peter Daniels, who’d caught briefly for the Cardinals before the First World War. Then his eyes snapped back. Peter Daniels, more commonly known as Mutt, had been his manager at Decatur in the I–I-I League when the Lizards invaded the USA, and had gone into the Army with him. So Mutt had made it to almost eighty. That wasn’t a bad run, not a bad run at all. Sam hoped he’d be able to match it.

Here came the flunky again. “The president will see you now, Lieutenant Colonel.”

“Thanks.” Yeager got to his feet, walking into the office, and saluted his commander in chief. “Reporting as ordered, sir.”

“Sit down, Yeager.” Earl Warren didn’t believe in wasting time. “We have a couple of things to talk about today.”

“Yes, sir.” Sam sat. A houseman brought in coffee on a silver tray. When the president took a cup, Yeager did, too.

President Warren picked up a fat manila folder. “Your reports on the Lizard hatchlings-Mickey and Donald: I like that-have been fascinating. I’ve enjoyed reading them not only for what they tell me about Lizard development but also for the way they’re written. You could have been published, I think, had you chosen to try to go in that direction.”

“Maybe, Mr. President, and thanks, but I hope you’ll excuse me for saying that I have my doubts,” Sam answered. He added, “I was also smart enough to marry a good editor. She makes me sound better than I would otherwise.”

“A good editor can do that,” Warren agreed. “A bad one… But back to business. In many ways, these two hatchlings seem to be progressing far faster than human children would.”

“They sure are, sir.” Yeager nodded. He almost added an emphatic cough, but wasn’t sure the president would understand. “Of course, they’re born-uh, hatched-able to run and grab onto things. That gives them a big head start. But they understand faster than babies do, the way puppies or kittens would.”

“But they aren’t short-lived, as dogs and cats are,” President Warren said.

“Oh, no, sir. They live as long as we do. Probably longer.” Yeager eyed the president with respect. Warren saw the implications of things. “The only thing they don’t do is, they don’t talk. They understand hand signals. They’re even starting to understand expressions, which is funny, because they don’t have any of their own to speak of. But no words yet. Nothing even really close.”

“A lot of babies are just starting to say ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ at nine or ten months,” the president pointed out. His stern face softened. “It’s been a while, but I remember?”

“I know, sir, but there isn’t anything in the noises they make that’s even close to ‘dada’ or ‘mama,’ ” Sam answered. “The one thing I will say is that there are more human-sounding noises in the babbling than there were when they first came out of their eggs. They’re listening to people, but they aren’t ready to start talking to people yet. We’ve got a ways to go before that happens.”

“All right, Lieutenant Colonel. You sound as if you’re doing a splendid job there,” Warren said. “And all that is in accordance with what you’ve been able to learn about hatchlings from the Lizards, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, sir, it sure is,” Yeager said. “I’ve had to be careful about that, though. You made it clear we don’t want them finding out what we’re up to there.” He didn’t mention the hypothetical he’d offered to Kassquit. He wished he hadn’t done it, but too late now.

“It may turn out to be a smaller problem than we believed at first,” the president replied. “That brings me to the next thing on the agenda, your upcoming meeting with this”-he opened the folder and flipped through it to find the name he needed-“this Kassquit, yes.”

“That’s right sir?’ Sam nodded, oddly relieved to find Warren thinking about her, too. “Turns out the Lizards did unto us before we had the chance to do unto them. Kassquit is for them what Mickey and Donald will be for us in twenty years or so. She’s been raised as a Lizard, she wishes she were a Lizard, but she’s stuck with a human being’s body.”

“Yes.” The president flipped through more pages. “I’ve read your reports on your conversations with her with great interest-even if you were less than perfectly discreet, considering what you just said now.” No, Warren didn’t miss much. But he didn’t make an issue of it, continuing, “Do you think there’s any chance of teaching her she really is a human being and ought to be loyal to mankind instead of the Race?”

“No, Mr. President.” Yeager spoke decisively. “She’s a naturalized citizen of the Empire, you might say. We’re just the old country to her, and she’d no more choose us over them than most Americans would choose Germany or Norway or what have you over the USA, especially if they came here as tiny babies. She’s made her choice-or had it made for her by the way she was brought up.”

“Your point is well taken,” Warren said. “I still judge the meeting worthwhile, and I’m glad you and your son are going forward with it. Even if we have no hope of turning her, we can learn a lot from her.” He went back to the manila folder, which apparently held copies of all of Sam’s reports for quite some time. “Now-you raised another interesting point here: this note about the possibility of the Lizards’ domestic animals making themselves more at home on Earth than we wish they would.”

“I got to thinking about rabbits in Australia,” Sam answered. “There are other cases, too. Starlings, for instance. There weren’t any starlings in America seventy-five years ago. Somebody turned loose a few dozen of them in New York City in 1890, and now they’re all over the country.”

“The year before I was born,” Warren said musingly. “I see we may have a problem here. I don’t see what to do about it, though. We can hardly go to war with the Race over the equivalents of dogs and cows and goats.”

“I wouldn’t think so, sir,” Yeager agreed. “But these creatures are liable to damage big chunks of the world.”

“From the reports that have come in from certain areas-our desert southwest among them-that may already be starting to happen,” the president replied. “As I say, it may be a problem, and it may well get worse. But not all problems have neat, tidy solutions, however much we wish they would.”

“I used to think they did,” Yeager said. “The older I get, though, the more it looks as if you’re right.”

“You’ve had some problems of your own,” President Warren observed. “If you weren’t fast with a pistol, I suspect I’d be talking with someone else right now.”

“Somebody tried to take a shot at me, sure enough?’ Sam shrugged. “I still don’t have the faintest idea why.”

“One thing you keep doing, Lieutenant Colonel, is looking into matters that aren’t really any of your concern,” Warren answered. “I’ve had to mention this to you before. If you didn’t, you might not have had such difficulties.”

Sam Yeager started to say something, then stopped and studied the president. Was Warren trying to tell him something? Was it what it sounded like? Had that punk tried to punch his ticket because he’d shown he was too interested in the space station that became the Lewis and Clark or in the data store that held information about the night the colonization fleet was attacked?

This is the United States, he thought. Things like that don’t happen here…do they? They can’t happen here… can they?

“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” the president asked, sounding like the kindly, concerned grandfather he also looked like.

“Yes, sir, I’m afraid I do,” Sam said. He wished he hadn’t put it like that, but that did him as much good as wishing he hadn’t swung at a curve down in the dirt.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” President Warren said easily. “You’re doing a wonderful job. I’ve said so all along. Keep right on doing it, and everything will be fine.” He closed the manila folder, an obvious gesture of dismissal.

Yeager got to his feet. “Okay, sir, I’ll do that,” he said. But, as he turned to go, he knew damn well it wasn’t okay. And he knew something else. It wouldn’t matter for beans come November, but he’d just changed his mind: he’d vote for Hubert Humphrey anyway.

When the telephone rang, Straha answered it in the language of the Race: “I greet you.” He enjoyed the confused splutters that commonly caused among Big Uglies. Most of them hung up without further ado. He also enjoyed that.

This time, though, he got an answer in the same tongue: “And I greet you, Shiplord. Sam Yeager here. How are you today?”

“I thank you-I am well,” Straha said. “I telephoned your home the other day, but learned you were out of the city.”

“I have returned,” the Tosevite said. Straha thought he sounded unhappy, but had trouble figuring out why. Any male should have been glad to complete a mission and come home once more. In that, the Big Uglies were similar to the Race.

Or maybe, Straha thought, I am simply misreading his tone. Although he had lived among the Big Uglies since defecting from the conquest fleet, he did not always accurately gauge their emotions. He felt no small pride at reading them as well as he did: his diligence had, in most instances, overcome billions of years of separate evolution.

“And what do you want from me today?” he asked. He assumed Yeager wanted something. Few if any Big Uglies were in the habit of calling him simply to pass the time of day. As a defector, he understood that. He was likelier to be a source of information than a friend. And yet, among the Tosevites, Sam Yeager was as close to a friend as he had. He sighed sadly, even though he despised self-pity.

“I was just wondering if anything new about Kassquit had bounced off your hearing diaphragms,” Yeager said. “You remember: the Big Ugly being raised as a female of the Race.”

“Of course,” Straha said, though he was glad Sam Yeager had reminded him who Kassquit was. “I regret to have to tell you, I have heard nothing.”

“Too bad,” Yeager said. “Anything I can find out would help a lot. If we can work things out with the Race, my hatchling and I will be going up into space to meet her. The more we know, the better off we will be.”

“If I hear anything of interest, you may rest assured I will inform you of it,” Straha said. “But I cannot tell you what I do not know.”

“Truth,” Yeager admitted. “It would make things a lot easier if you could. Well, I thank you for your time.” He shifted into English for two words-“So long”-and hung up.

Not altogether by chance-very likely not at all by chance-Straha’s driver strolled into the kitchen a moment later. “That was Sam Yeager, wasn’t it?” he asked.

“Yes,” Straha answered shortly.

“What did he want?” the driver asked.

Straha turned both eye turrets toward him. “Why are you so curious whenever Yeager calls?” he asked in return.

The driver folded his arms across his chest and replied, “My job is being curious.” Your job is giving me the answers I need, was his unspoken corollary.

And, by the rules under which Straha had to live, the driver was right. With a sigh, he said, “He was making inquiries about Kassquit?”

Unlike the ex-shiplord, his driver didn’t need to be reminded who that was. “Oh. The female Tosevite up in space?” He relaxed. “All right. No problem there.”

That roused Straha to indignation: “If you Big Uglies have problems with your finest expert on the Race, my opinion is that you have severe problems indeed.”

As usual, he failed to irk his driver. The fellow shifted into the language of the Race to drive home his point: “Shiplord, you were one of the best officers the conquest fleet had. That did not mean you always got on well with your colleagues. If you had, you and I would not be talking like this now, would we?”

“It seems unlikely,” Straha admitted. “Very well. I see what you mean. But if Yeager is as great a nuisance to his colleagues as I was to mine, he is a very considerable nuisance indeed” He spoke in tones of fond reminiscence; if he hadn’t made Atvar’s blood boil, it wasn’t for lack of effort.

His driver said, “He is,” and used an emphatic cough.

“I see,” Straha said slowly. He’d known Yeager had occasional trouble with the American authorities, but hadn’t really believed they were of that magnitude. No wonder I sometimes feel as if he and I were hatched from the same egg, he thought.

“Kassquit, though, is legitimate business for him,” the driver said. “He should stick to legitimate business. He would do better if he did.” With that, he turned on his heel and strode away.

Arrogant, egg-addled… But Straha cursed the driver only mentally, and even then the curse broke down half formed. The Big Ugly was anything but addled, and the ex-shiplord knew it. Indeed, his effortless competence was one of the most oppressive things about him.

When the driver had gone round the corner, Straha opened a drawer, took out a vial of ginger, poured some into the palm of his hand, and tasted. Even as pleasure surged through him, he carefully put the vial back and closed the drawer. The driver knew he tasted, of course. The driver got ginger for him. But he did not like to taste in front of the Big Ugly. He treated the Tosevite as he would have treated one of his own aides: no high-ranking officer cared to do something unseemly while his subordinates were watching.

Tasting ginger, of course, was legal under the laws of the United States. But those laws mattered only so much to Straha. He lived under them, yes, but they weren’t his. The whole snout-counting process by which the Big Uglies in the USA chose their lawmakers had never failed to strike him as absurd. Emotionally, he still adhered to the regulations of the conquest fleet, and under them tasting ginger was a punishable offense.

With the herb blazing in him, he followed the driver out to the front room. The Big Ugly had just settled down with a magazine, and seemed somewhat surprised to have to deal with Straha again so soon. “Can I help you with something, Shiplord?” he asked.

“Yes,” Straha answered. “You can tell me whose snout you intend to choose in the upcoming snoutcounting for the leader of your not-empire?”

“Oh, I think I’ll vote to reelect President Warren,” the driver answered in English.

Straha didn’t blame him for shifting languages; the Big Uglies’ tongue was better suited to discussing this strange quadrennial rite of theirs. The ex-shiplord also used English: “And why is that?”

“Well, the country’s doing okay, or better than okay,” the Tosevite said. “Warren’s made sure we’re strong, and I like the way he’s handled relations with the Race. We have a saying: don’t change horses in midstream. So I figure staying with the man we’ve got is probably the best way to go.”

That sounded cautious and conservative. It might almost have been a male of the Race speaking, not a Big Ugly. As a Tosevite might have stuck out his index finger, Straha stuck out his tongue. “Suppose Warren loses, though. Suppose more American Tosevites choose the snout of this other male, this… Humpty?”

“Humphrey,” his driver corrected. His sigh sounded like the sigh of a male of the Race. “Then they do, that’s all. Then Humphrey becomes president, and we all hope he does as good a job as Warren did. I’d support him. I’d follow his orders. I’d have to.”

“But you would still think all the time that this other male, the one you have leading you now, would be able to do the job better,” Straha persisted.

“Yes, I probably would,” the driver said.

“Then why would you follow Humphrey?” Straha took care to pronounce the name correctly.

“Because more people would have voted for him than for Warren,” the Big Ugly replied. “We’ve been over this before, Shiplord. With us, the government is more important than the names of the people in the top slots. Things go on any which way.”

“Madness,” Straha said with conviction. “What would happen if some large number of American Tosevites decided they did not like the way the snoutcounting-uh, the election-turned out, and refused to obey the male who was chosen?”

To his surprise, the driver answered, “We had that happen once, as a matter of fact. It was just over a hundred years ago.”

“Oh? And what was the result?” Straha asked.

“It was called the Civil War,” the driver said. “You may have noticed some of the anniversary celebrations we’ve been having.” Straha made the negative hand gesture. Lots of things went on around him that he didn’t notice. With a shrug, the driver went on, “Well, whether you’ve noticed or not, the war caused so much damage that we’ve never come close to having another one over an election.”

So Big Uglies could learn from history. Straha wouldn’t have bet on it. The Tosevites were most adept technically; had they not been, this planet would be a firmly held part of the Empire. But they’d been doing their best to destroy one another when the conquest fleet arrived.

Straha wondered what would have happened if the Race had waited another couple of hundred years before sending out the conquest fleet. The Big Uglies had already been working on explosive-metal bombs. Maybe they would have committed suicide. Or maybe, Straha thought unhappily, not a single ship from the conquest fleet would have managed to land on Tosev 3.

The ginger was leaving him. So was the euphoria it had brought. Imagining the Race ambushed by fearsome Big Uglies came easy at such times. It had come too close to happening as things were.

“Is there anything else, Shiplord?” The driver returned to the language of the Race, a sure sign he considered the conversation on snoutcounting at an end.

“No, nothing else,” Straha answered. “You may return to your reading. What publication have you got there?”

By the way the driver hesitated, Straha knew he’d hit a nerve. He thought he knew what kind of nerve he’d hit, too. Sure enough, when the driver showed him the magazine, he found it to be one featuring female Big Uglies divested of most of the cloth wrappings they customarily used.

“I do not mind your titillating your mating urge if that does not interfere with your other duties, and it does not seem to,” Straha said.

Despite that reassurance, the driver closed the magazine and would not open it again while Straha was in the room. He was as embarrassed about openly indulging his sexuality as Straha was about tasting ginger in front of him. While different in so many ways, Big Uglies and the Race shared some odd things.

Straha said, “Never mind. I will leave you in privacy. And I will not hold it against you that you are so reluctant to extend me the same privilege.”

“Shiplord, my job is to keep you safe first and happy second,” the driver answered. “It is much harder for me to keep you safe if I do not know where you are and what you are doing.”

“But it would be much easier for you to keep me happy under those circumstances,” Straha said. The driver only shrugged. He had his priorities. He’d spelled them out for the ex-shiplord. And Straha, like it or not, was stuck with them: one more delight of exile.

Arguing with Heinrich Himmler hadn’t got Felless tossed out of the Reich. From that, she reluctantly concluded nothing she would do would get her expelled. The proper attitude under those circumstances was to buckle down and do her job in Nuremberg as well as she could.

Felless cared very little for the proper attitude. She was gloomily certain she could do her job here without an error for the next hundred years and Veffani would still refuse to transfer her to a starship or even to a different Tosevite not-empire. And she could not appeal to Cairo for relief from such high-handed treatment, not after several leading officials from the Race’s administrative center on Tosev 3 had mated with her in the ambassador’s conference chamber.

Among the Big Uglies, mating created bonds of affection. Among the Race, all it seemed to create was resentment, especially when it was an out-of-season, ginger-induced mating. Felless sighed. Just what she didn’t want: a reason to wish she were a Tosevite.

What she did want was another taste of ginger. The craving gnawed at her like an itch deep under her scales that she couldn’t hope to scratch. She had several tastes waiting in her desk. The battle she fought wasn’t to keep from tasting. It was to wait till she had the best chance of going long enough after her taste to keep from exciting males with her pheromones when she left her office.

It was also a losing battle. Her eye turrets kept sliding away from the monitor and toward the desk drawer where she’d hidden the ginger. You are nothing but an addict, dependent on a miserable Tosevite herb, she told herself severely. That should have shamed her. Back when she’d first started tasting, it had shamed her. It didn’t any more. Now she knew it was nothing but a statement of fact.

Like her eye turrets, the chair swiveled. Before she quite knew what she’d done, she turned the chair away from the computer table and toward the desk. She’d just started to rise when the telephone circuitry inside the computer hissed for attention.

She turned back with a hiss of her own, one that mixed frustration and relief. “I greet you,” she said, and then, when she saw Veffani’s image on the screen, “I greet you, superior sir.”

“And I greet you, Senior Researcher,” the ambassador to the Reich replied. “Come to my office immediately.”

“It shall be done,” Felless said, and switched off. If she was busy, she could keep her mind-or some of her mind-off her craving. Had Veffani waited a little longer before calling, she would have created fresh scandal by poking her nose outside her office.

Maybe the call was a test. If it was, she would pass it. She’d passed other, similar, tests before. If she passed enough of them… odds were it still wouldn’t matter. Veffani had made it all too clear he wouldn’t let her go no matter what she did.

As she had on that disastrous day when the ambassador summoned her after she’d tasted, she walked by Slomikk in the hall. The science officer turned an eye turret in her direction, no doubt wondering whether mating pheromones would reach his scent receptors in a moment. When they didn’t, he kept on walking. Felless felt as if she’d won an obscure victory.

Pheromones didn’t matter to Veffani’s secretary, a female from the colonization fleet. Even so, after Felless’ previous fiasco, the female was wary. “I trust there will be no problem when you go in to see him?” she said.

“None,” Felless said, and walked past the secretary too fast for her to get in any more digs.

Veffani turned an eye turret toward her. “I greet you, Senior Researcher. You are commendably prompt.”

“I thank you, Ambassador.” Felless fought to hold her temper. Nothing she did here would get her a commendation, and she knew it only too well. “How may I serve the Race?”

When Veffani didn’t answer right away, hope began to rise in her. If the ambassador didn’t like what she had to say, maybe it would do her some good. At last, he said, “As you no doubt know, you were reckoned the colonization fleet’s leading expert on alien races when your fleet set out from Home.”

Felless made the affirmative gesture. “Yes, superior sir. I did not know then how much of my training would be useless here on Tosev 3.”

“This world has surprised all of us,” Veffani said, which was an undoubted truth. “The point I am trying to make, however, is that Fleetlord Reffet still reckons you a leading expert on the Big Uglies, no matter how little you deserve that recognition when compared to various males from the conquest fleet.”

Now hope did surge, hot and strong, in Felless. Being a fleetlord himself, Reffet could cancel out Atvar and the males from the conquest fleet-even Veffani. He could… provided he wanted to badly enough. Felless had to fight to keep a quiver from her voice as she asked, “What does the exalted fleetlord require of me?”

“I cannot tell you, because no one has informed me.” Veffani didn’t sound very happy to tell her that. He went on, “The fleetlord’s representative, a certain Faparz, will be coming down by shuttlecraft to inform you personally. He is due to arrive this evening.”

“By shuttlecraft?” Felless knew she sounded surprised, but the ambassador could scarcely blame her for that, no matter what else he blamed her for. “Why does he not communicate by telephone or electronic message?”

“That I can answer,” Veffani replied. “The accursed Deutsch Tosevites are becoming altogether too good at reading and decoding our signals. And they are not the only ones, are they? Do I not recall your telling me an American Big Ugly succeeded for some time in masquerading as a male of the Race on the computer network?”

“Yes, superior sir, that is correct.” Felless knew another stab of jealousy about Ttomalss-one that, for a change, had nothing to do with his escape from the Reich. His project involving the Tosevite hatchling kept paying handsome dividends. Felless might have thought of doing such a thing herself, but Ttomalss, having come with the conquest fleet, had an enormous head start on her… as he did in all matters Tosevite. She forced her thoughts back to the matter directly in front of her. “Then whatever message Faparz bears is one where security is an important concern?”

“I should think so, yes,” Veffani answered. “My I offer you a word of advice, Senior Researcher?”

“I rather think I know what you are about to say,” Felless replied.

“Duty requires me to say it anyhow.” It wasn’t just duty, either: Veffani looked as if he was enjoying himself. “Do not taste ginger between now and then. Faparz is not a Big Ugly male, and you will not win favor with him because he has mated with you. The reverse is likelier to be true.”

“Believe me, superior sir, I understand that,” Felless said stiffly. She would crave ginger, and this evening felt a long way off. But the ambassador was undoubtedly right, even if he took too much pleasure in rubbing her snout in her own disgrace.

“For your sake, I hope you do,” he said now. “I would just as soon see your punishment continue; in my opinion, you deserve it. You will prove that if you humiliate yourself with the representative of the fleetlord of the colonization fleet as well as with those from the conquest fleet.” Felless did her best to hide her resentment, part of which sprang from Veffani’s being right. The ambassador went on, “I dismiss you.”

“I thank you, superior sir.” Felless did not in fact feel in the least thankful, but even Big Uglies recognized how hypocrisy lubricated social wheels. She hurried away before Veffani found any more pungent advice for her.

As was her habit, she retreated to her office. That proved a mistake; her eye turrets kept going back to the drawer where she kept her precious vials of ginger. But fleeing the office would have meant mingling with the rest of the embassy staff, most of whom where members of the conquest fleet and most of whom had no more use for her than did Veffani. Except when I’ve been tasting ginger, she thought. They have a use for me then, but not one that makes them like me or respect me any more afterwards.

All that made perfect sense… in her mind. But she’d been on the point of tasting when Veffani summoned her to his office. No matter what made sense in her mind, her body craved ginger. It let her know it craved ginger, too, and in no uncertain terms. Every moment seemed an eternity. She wanted to call Veffani back and ask him when in the evening Faparz was scheduled to arrive, but made herself hold back. The ambassador would surely understand why she made such a call: would understand, and would scorn her more than ever.

She was trembling with the desperate urge to taste when the intercom unit connected to her door hissed for attention. “Enter,” she called, and the male waiting in the corridor did come in.

“I greet you, Senior Researcher,” Faparz said. The body paint on one side of his torso and one arm was plainer than Felless’. That on his other side was as colorful and ornate as anyone on or near Tosev 3 possessed.

“I greet you, Fleetlord’s Adjutant,” Felless replied. Veffani hadn’t told her Reffet was sending his adjutant, and Felless hadn’t expected it. Maybe the ambassador hadn’t known. But maybe he’d been hoping she would taste, and would end up in trouble because of it. Well, she hadn’t. Pride helped fight her desire for the Tosevite herb-helped a little, anyway. “How may I serve the commander of the colonization fleet?”

“We are seeking to make colonization more effective, and to spread safely over broader areas of Tosev 3,” Faparz replied. “Your insights into this process will be valuable, and most appreciated.”

“I shall of course do whatever I can to aid this worthy effort,” Felless said. “One thing that occurs to me is using animals native to Home to make portions of Tosev 3 more Homelike. This is, I gather, already beginning to occur informally; systematizing it could yield good results.”

“I agree,” Faparz said. “This notion has already been proposed, and is likely to be implemented.” Felless hid her disappointment. But Reffet’s adjutant went on, “That is the sort of idea we are seeking. That you can find such a scheme on the spur of the moment shows you are likely to be valuable to the project.”

“Spirits of Emperors past look kindly on you for your praise!” Felless exclaimed. Then her own spirits grew gloomy, almost as if ginger were ebbing from her system. “But I must tell you, Fleetlord’s Adjutant, that removing me from the Reich may prove difficult. Ambassador Veffani has… formed a grudge against me, and desires that I stay here to work among Big Uglies.”

“I am aware of the nature of this, ah, grudge,” Faparz said primly, and Felless’ spirits tumbled down into her toeclaws. Then Reffet’s aide continued, “Still, I believe we may accommodate the ambassador while still involving you. Some of this research is being conducted at a consular site that, while within the boundaries of the Reich, is relatively close to territory the Race rules, and the climate there is certainly more salubrious than in this miserable, cold, dank, misty place.”

“If you are offering me a new assignment, superior sir, I gladly accept.” Felless had to swallow an emphatic cough that would have shown how glad she really was. Now she felt almost as if she’d had the taste of ginger she’d forgone waiting for Faparz. Wherever he-and Reffet-sent her, it couldn’t possibly be worse than Nuremberg. Of that she had not a doubt in the world, not a doubt in the whole wide Empire.

Lieutenant Colonel Johannes Drucker floated weightless in Kathe, the reusable upper stage of the A-45 that had blasted him into orbit from Peenemunde. He was glad to be a couple of hundred kilometers above the weather, even more glad than usual: fogs rolling in off the Baltic had twice delayed his launch. Here in space, he still felt like a man serving his country. Down on the ground, he had trouble feeling like anything but a man his country was trying to get.

Gently, he patted the instrument panel. A lot of fliers named their upper stages for wives or girlfriends. How many, though, named them for wives or girlfriends who were, or might be, a quarter part Jew? Well, no one had tried making him change the name. That was something, a small something. Since the SS had had to give Kathe back to him, perhaps the official thinking was that she couldn’t really have had any Jewish blood at all. Or perhaps the powers that be simply hadn’t noticed till now, and a technician with a can of paint would be waiting when Drucker came down.

He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about anything of the sort. Instead, he looked outward. Somewhere out there, in the asteroid belt past the orbit of Mars, the Americans aboard the Lewis and Clark were doing… what? Drucker didn’t know. Neither did anyone else in the Greater German Reich.

What he did know was that he was enormously jealous of the Americans. They’d gone out there in a real spacecraft, not just an overgrown Roman candle like the one he’d ridden into orbit. “We should have done that,” he muttered. Germany had been ahead of the USA in rocketry during the fighting against the Lizards; it struck him as unconscionable that the Reich ’s lead had been frittered away.

His gaze grew hungry, as hungry as those of the wolves that had once prowled around Peenemunde. The Americans had taken a long step toward building a real starship. If the Reich had such ships, the Lizards would be shaking in the boots they didn’t wear. If the Reich had starships, they would be vengeance weapons, and the Race had to know it.

The radio crackled to life: “Spaceship of the Deutsche, acknowledge this transmission at once!”

It was, of course, a Lizard talking. No human being would have been so arrogant. No human nation could have afforded to be so arrogant to the Greater German Reich. But the Race could. However strong the Reich was, the Race was stronger. Every trip into space rubbed Drucker’s nose in that unpalatable fact.

“Acknowledging,” he said, shortly, using the language of the Race himself. Some of the Lizards with whom he dealt were decent enough sorts; with them, he went through the polite I greet you s. To the ones who only snapped at him, he snapped in return.

“Your orbit is acceptable,” the Lizard told him. The Lizard would have been not just arrogant but furious had his orbit been anything else.

“You so relieve my mind,” Drucker responded. That was sarcasm and truth commingled. Weapons were tracking him now. They would have been ready to go after Kathe had an unannounced orbital change made the Race nervous.

“See that you stay where you ought to be,” the Lizard said. “Out.”

Drucker chuckled. “Not even a chance to get the last word.” He chuckled again. “Probably a female of the Race.” The real Kathe, had she heard that slur on womankind, would have snorted and stuck an elbow in his ribs. He probably would have deserved it, too.

He glanced down at Earth below. He was sweeping along above the western Pacific; a nasty storm was building there, with outlying tendrils of cloud already stretching out over Japan and reaching toward China. The Reich, the Americans, and the Race all sold meteorological photos to countries without satellites of their own. Back when Drucker was a child, people had been at the mercy of the weather. They still were, but to a lesser degree. They couldn’t change it, but at least they had some idea of what was on the way. That made a difference.

Down toward the equator Kathe flew at better than 27,000 kilometers an hour. The velocity sounded enormous, but wasn’t enough to escape Earth orbit, let alone travel from star to star. That bothered Drucker more than usual. He wanted to go out farther into the solar system, wanted to and couldn’t. Some German spacecraft had gone to Mars, but he hadn’t been aboard any of them. And they were only rockets, hardly more potent than the A-45 that had lifted him into orbit.

“Calling the German spacecraft! Calling the German spacecraft!” Another peremptory signal, but this one in German, and one he was glad to answer.

“Kathe here, with Drucker aboard,” he said. “How goes it, Hermann Goring?”

“Well enough,” the radio operator aboard the German space station replied. “And with you?”

“Not too bad,” Drucker said. “And when do you take off and start rampaging through outer space?”

“Would day after tomorrow suit you?” The radioman laughed. So did Drucker. Up above them, some Lizard listening to their transmission would probably have started tearing out his hair, if only he’d had any to tear.

“Day after tomorrow wouldn’t suit me at all,” Drucker said, “because then I couldn’t be aboard when you left. And I want to go traveling.”

“I don’t blame you,” the radio operator said. “The frontier is out this way. If the Americans are going to explore it, we had better do the same.”

“Not just the Americans,” Drucker said, and said no more. The Lizards already knew the Reich mistrusted them. For that matter, the mistrust ran both ways, no doubt with good reason.

Drucker wondered just how soon the Hermann Goring really would be leaving Earth orbit for something more worthwhile. Sooner than it would have if the Americans hadn’t lit a fire under the Reich ’s space program-he was sure of that. He was also sure the Race would be horrified to have not one but two Earthly nations on the way toward genuine spacecraft.

A little later, he passed about twenty kilometers below the German space station. Through Zeiss field glasses, it seemed almost close enough to touch. The job of converting it to a spaceship was going much more smoothly than it had for the Americans. But they’d kept what they were up to a secret, while the Reich was making no bones about what it had in mind. If the Lizards didn’t like it, they could start a war. Such was Himmler’s attitude, anyhow.

The swastikas painted on the space station were big enough to be easily visible. Straining his eyes, Drucker imagined he could read Goring’s name above them, but he really couldn’t, or not quite. He chuckled a little. Down on Earth, the late Reichsmarschall was a bad joke, the Luftwaffe moribund and subservient to the Wehrmacht and the SS. But Goring’s name would go traveling farther than the pudgy, drug-addled founder of the German air force could ever have imagined.

And the Lizards couldn’t-or at least they’d better not-try to forbid a German spacecraft from going where an American one had already gone. That would mean trouble, big trouble. It might even mean war.

Back when he’d been driving a panzer against the Lizards, Drucker would have given his left nut to control the kind of firepower he had at his fingertips now. He’d been so outgunned then… and he was outgunned up here, too. He sighed. The Lizards had more and better weapons. Odds were they would for a long time to come. But the Reich could hurt them. That was the essence of German foreign policy. And he, Johannes Drucker, could hurt them with his nuclear-tipped missiles.

He hoped he wouldn’t have to. They would surely blow him out of the sky the instant after he launched. The one thing he didn’t think they’d do was try to blow him out of the sky before he could launch. They’d attacked Earth without provocation, but hadn’t staged any unprovoked assaults since the fighting ended.

Maybe that made them more trustworthy than human beings. Maybe it just made them more naive. Drucker never had figured that out.

His radio crackled into life. “Relay ship Hoth to spacecraft Kathe. Urgent. Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledging,” Drucker said. “Was ist los, Hoth?” The relay ship, down in the South Atlantic, kept spacecraft in touch with the Reich even when they were out of direct radio range. All the spacefaring human powers used relay ships. The Lizards, with their world-bestriding lands, didn’t have to.

“Urgent news bulletin,” the radio operator down below answered.

“Go ahead?’ Drucker did his best to hide the alarm that surged through him. But surely his superiors wouldn’t order him into battle with a news bulletin… would they?

Plainly reading from text in front of him, the radio operator said, “Radio Nuremberg has announced the death of Heinrich Himmler, Chancellor of the Greater German Reich. The Chancellor, on duty to his last breath, suffered a coronary thrombosis while working on state papers. No date for services celebrating his life has yet been set, nor has a successor been named.”

“Gott im Himmel,” Drucker whispered. Things would be hopping down in Nuremberg now. Even more than Hitler before him, Himmler had stayed strong because he let no one around him have any strength. Nor has a successor been named was liable to cover some vicious infighting in the days to come.

“Have you got that, Kathe?” the radioman asked.

“I’ve got it,” Drucker said. This is liable to be the safest place I could find, he thought. He almost said it aloud, but thought better of that.

And then the fellow down below said it for him: “Staying a few thousand kilometers away when the big boys squabble isn’t so bad, eh?”

“That’s the truth, sure enough,” Drucker answered. “Well, I don’t give orders. All I do is take them. Whoever the new Fuhrer is, he’ll tell me what to do and I’ll do it. That’s the way things work.”

Without a doubt, someone aboard the Hoth was recording every word he said. Without a doubt, the Gestapo would be listening to make sure he sounded properly loyal to the Reich and to its Fuhrer, whoever that turned out to be. Drucker knew as much. He was no fool. He also knew his loyalty was liable to be suspect. That meant he had to be especially careful to say all the right things.

And the radioman aboard the Hoth said, “That’s how we all feel, of course. Our loyalty is to the state, not to any one man.”

He said all the right things, too. And Drucker made a point of agreeing with him: “That’s how it is, all right. That’s how it has to be.”

As he flew along, as the signal from the Hoth faded, he wondered who would take over for the late, unlamented (at least by him) Heinrich Himmler. The SS would naturally have a candidate. So would the Wehrmacht. And Joseph Goebbels, passed over when Hitler died, would want another try at ruling the Reich. There might be others; Drucker did his best not to pay attention to politics. Maybe that was a mistake. More and more these days, politics kept paying attention to him. His orbit swept him up toward the Reich. By the time his tour ended, everything was likely to be over.