When you were one of half a dozen humans on a world whose very air was death to you—when you didn’t even have visitors of your own species, because the ship that regularly called belonged to a Cynthian carrier—you had no choice but to live in free and easy style. Dalmady had had that explained to him while he was being trained for this post, and recognized it and went along with it. But he wondered if he would ever become accustomed to the casualness of the sophisticates whom he bossed.

  “I don’t know,” he answered the girl. “The Thalassocrat wants me at the palace.”

  “Why, he knows perfectly well how to make a visi call.”

  “Yes, but a nomad’s brought word of something nasty in the Uplands, and won’t come near the set. Afraid it’ll imprison his soul, I imagine.”

  “Hm-m-m, I think not. We’re still trying to chart the basic Suleimanite psychology, you know, with only inadequate data from three or four cultures to go on…but, they don’t seem to have animistic tendencies like man’s. Ceremony, yes, in abundance, but nothing we can properly identify as magic or religion.”

  Dalmady barked a nervous laugh. “Sometimes I think my whole staff considers our commerce an infernal nuisance that keeps getting in the way of their precious science.”

  “Sometimes you’d be right,” Yvonne purred. “What’d hold us here except the chance to do research?”

  “And how long would your research last if the company closed down this base?” he flared. “Which it will if we start losing money. My job’s to see that we don’t. I could use cooperation.”

  She slipped from her stool, came to him and kissed him lightly. Her hair smelled like remembered steppe grass warmed by an orange sun, rippling under the rings of Altai. “Don’t we help?” she murmured. “I’m sorry, dear.”

  He bit his lip and stared past her, down the length of gaudy murals whose painting had beguiled much idle time over the years. “No, I’m sorry,” he said with the stiff honesty of his folk. “Of course you’re all loyal and— It’s me. Here I am, the youngest among you, a half-barbarian herdboy, supposed to make a go of things…in one of the easiest, most routinized outposts in this sector…and after a bare fifteen months—”

  If I fail, he thought, well, I can return home, no doubt, and dismiss the sacrifices my parents made to send me to managerial school offplanet, scorn the luck that Solar Spice and Liquors had an opening here and no more experienced employee to fill it, forget every dream about walking in times to come on new and unknown worlds that really call forth every resource a man has to give. Oh, yes, failure isn’t fatal, except in subtler ways than I have words for.

  “You fret too much.” Yvonne patted his cheek. “Probably this is just another tempest in a chickenhouse. You’ll bribe somebody, or arm somebody, or whatever’s needful, and that will once again be that.”

  “I hope so. But the Thalassocrat acted—well, not being committed to xenological scholarly precision, I’d say he acted worried, too.” Dalmady stood a few seconds longer, scowling, before: “All right, I’d better be on my way.” He gave her a hug. “Thanks, Yvonne.”

  She watched him till he was out of sight, then returned to her work. Officially she was the trade post’s secretary-treasurer, but such duties seldom came to her except when a freighter had landed. Otherwise she used the computers to try to find patterns in what fragments of knowledge her four colleagues could wrest from a world—an entire, infinitely varied world—and hoped that a few scientists elsewhere might eventually scan a report on Suleiman—one among thousands of planets—and be interested.

  Airsuit donned, Dalmady left the compound by its main personnel lock. Wanting time to compose himself, he went afoot through the city to the palace—if they were city and palace.

  He didn’t know. Books, tapes, lectures, and neuroinductors had crammed him with information about this part of this continent; but those were the everyday facts and skills needed to manage operations. Long talks with his subordinates here had added a little insight, but only a little. Direct experience with the autochthons was occasionally enlightening, but just as apt to be confusing. No wonder that, once a satisfactory arrangement was made with Coast and Upland tribes (?), his predecessors had not attempted expansion or improvement. When you don’t understand a machine, but it seems to be running reasonably smoothly, you don’t tinker much.

  Outside the compound’s force field, local gravity dragged at him with forty percent greater pull than Earth’s. Though his suit was light and his muscles hard, the air recycler necessarily included the extra mass of a unit for dealing with the hydrogen that seeped through any material. Soon he was sweating. Nevertheless it was as if the chill struck past all thermostatic coils, into his heavy bones.

  High overhead stood Osman, a furious white spark, twice as luminous as Sol but, at its distance, casting a bare sixteenth of what Earth gets. Clouds, tinged red by organic compounds, drifted on slow winds through a murky sky where one of the three moons was dimly visible. That atmosphere bore thrice a terrestrial standard pressure. It was mostly hydrogen and helium, with vapors of methane and ammonia and traces of other gas. Greenhouse effect did not extend to unfreezing water.

  Indeed, the planetary core was overlaid by a shell of ice, mixed with rock, penetrated by tilted metal-poor strata. The land glittered amidst its grayness and scrunched beneath Dalmady’s boots. It sloped down to a dark, choppy sea of liquid ammonia whose horizon was too remote—given a 17,000-kilometer radius—for him to make out through the red-misted air.

  Ice also were the buildings that rose blocky around him. They shimmered glasslike where doorways, or obscure carved symbols, did not break their smoothness. There were no streets in the usual sense, but aerial observation has disclosed an elaborate pattern in the layout of structures, about which the dwellers could not or would not speak. Wind moved ponderously between them. The air turned its sound, every sound, shrill.

  Traffic surged. It was mainly pedestrian, natives on their business, carrying the oddly shaped tools and containers of a fireless neolithic nonhuman culture. A few wagons lumbered in with produce from the hinterland; their draught animals suggested miniature dinosaurs modeled by someone who had heard vague rumors of such creatures. A related, more slender species was ridden. Coracles bobbed across the sea; you might as well say the crews were fishing, though a true fish could live here unprotected no longer than a man.

  Nothing reached Dalmady’s earphones except the wind, the distant wave-rumble, the clop of feet and creak of wagons. Suleimanites did not talk casually. They did communicate, however, and without pause; by gesture, by ripple across erectile fur, by delicate exchanges between scent glands. They avoided coming near the human, but simply because his suit was hot to their touch. He gave and received many signals of greeting. After two years—twenty-five of Earth’s—Coast and Uplands alike were becoming dependent on metal and plastic and energy-cell trade goods. Local labor had been eagerly available to help build a spaceport on the mesa overlooking town, and still did most of the work. That saved installing automatic machinery—one reason for the modest profit earned by this station.

  Dalmady leaned into his uphill walk. After ten minutes he was at the palace.

  The half-score natives posted outside the big, turreted building were not guards. While wars and robberies occurred on Suleiman, the slaying of a “king” seemed to be literally unthinkable. (An effect of pheromones? In every community the xenologists had observed thus far, the leader ate special foods which his followers insisted would poison anyone else; and maybe the followers were right.) The drums, plumed canes, and less identifiable gear which these beings carried were for ceremonial use.

  Dalmady controlled his impatience and watched with a trace of pleasure the ritual of opening doors and conducting him to the royal presence. The Suleimanites were a graceful and handsome species. They were plantigrade bipeds, rather like men although the body was thicker and the average only came to his shoulder. The hands each bore two fingers between two thumbs, and were supplemented by a prehensile tail. The head was round, with a parrotlike beak, tympani for hearing, one large golden-hued eye in the middle and two smaller, less developed ones for binocular and peripheral vision. Clothing was generally confined to a kind of sporran, elaborately patterned with symbols, to leave glands and mahogany fur available for signals. The fact that Suleimanite languages had so large a nonvocal component handicapped human efforts at understanding as much as anything else did.

  The Thalassocrat addressed Dalmady by voice alone, in the blue-glimmering ice cavern of his audience room. Earphones reduced the upper frequencies to some the man could hear. Nonetheless, that squeak and gibber always rather spoiled the otherwise impressive effect of flower crown and carven staff. So did the dwarfs, hunchbacks, and cripples who squatted on rugs and skin-draped benches. It was not known why household servants were always recruited among the handicapped. Suleimanites had tried to explain when asked, but their meaning never came through.

  “Fortune, power, and wisdom to you, Factor.” They didn’t use personal names on this world, and seemed unable to grasp the idea of an identification which was not a scent-symbol.

  “May they continue to abide with you, Thalassocrat.” The vocalizer on his back transformed Dalmady’s version of local speech into sounds that his lips could not bring forth.

  “We have here a Master of caravaneers,” the monarch said.

  Dalmady went through polite ritual with the Uplander, who was tall and rangy for a Suleimanite, armed with a stoneheaded tomahawk and a trade rifle designed for his planet, his barbarianism showing in gaudy jewels and bracelets. They were O.K., however, those hill country nomads. Once a bargain had been struck, they held to it with more literal-mindedness than humans could have managed.

  “And what is the trouble for which I am summoned, Master? Has your caravan met bandits on its way to the Coast? I will be glad to equip a force for their suppression.”

  Not being used to talking with men, the chief went into full Suleimanite language—his own dialect, at that—and became incomprehensible. One of the midgets stumped forward. Dalmady recognized him. A bright mind dwelt in that poor little body, drank deep of whatever knowledge about the universe was offered, and in return had frequently helped with counsel or knowledge. “Let me ask him out, Factor and Thalassocrat,” he suggested.

  “If you will, Advisor,” his overlord agreed.

  “I will be in your debt, Translator,” Dalmady said, with his best imitation of the prancing thanks-gesture.

  Beneath the courtesies, his mind whirred and he found himself holding his breath while he waited. Surely the news couldn’t be really catastrophic!

  He reviewed the facts, as if hoping for some hitherto unnoticed salvation in them. With little axial tilt, Suleiman lacked seasons. Bluejack needed the cool, dry climate of the Uplands, but there it grew the year around. Primitive natives, hunters and gatherers, picked it in the course of their wanderings. Every several months, terrestrial, such a tribe would make rendezvous with one of the more advanced nomadic herding communities, who bartered for the parched leaves and fruits. A caravan would then form and make the long trip to this city, where Solar’s folk would acquire the bales in exchange for Technic merchandise. You could count on a load arriving about twice a month. Four times in an Earthside year, the Cynthian vessel took away the contents of Solar’s warehouse…and left a far more precious cargo of letters, tapes, journals, books, news from the stars that were so rarely seen in these gloomy heavens.

  It wasn’t the most efficient system imaginable, but it was the cheapest, once you calculated what the cost would be—in capital investment and civilized-labor salaries—of starting plantations. And costs must be kept low or the enterprise would change from a minor asset to a liability, which would soon be liquidated. As matters were, Suleiman was a typical outpost of its kind: to the scientists, a fascinating study and a chance to win reputation in their fields; to the factors, a comparatively easy job, a first step on a ladder at the top of which waited the big, glamorous, gorgeously paid managerial assignments.

  Or thus it had been until now.

  The Translator turned to Dalmady. “The Master says this,” he piped. “Lately in the Uplands have come what he calls…no, I do not believe that can be said in words alone— It is clear to me, they are machines that move about harvesting the bluejack.”

  “What?” The man realized he had exclaimed in Anglic. Through suddenly loud pulses, he heard the Translator go on:

  “The wild folk were terrified and fled those parts. The machines came and took what they had stored against their next rendezvous. That angered this Master’s nomads, who deal there. They rode to protest. From afar they saw a vessel, like the great flying vessel that lands here, and a structure abuilding. Those who oversaw that work were…low, with many legs and claws for hands…long noses— A gathering robot came and shot lightning past the nomads. They saw they, too, must flee, lest its warning shot become deadly. The Master himself took a string of remounts and posted hither as swiftly as might be. In words, I cannot say more of what he has to tell.”

  Dalmady gasped into the frigid blueness that enclosed him. His mouth felt dry, his knees weak, his stomach in upheaval. “Baburites,” he mumbled. “Got to be. But why’re they doing this to us?”

  Brush, herbage, leaves on the infrequent trees, were many shades of black. Here and there a patch of red, or brown, or blue flowering relieved it, or an ammonia river cataracting down the hills. Farther off, a range of ice mountains flashed blindingly; Suleiman’s twelve-hour day was drawing to a close, and Osman’s rays struck level through a break in roiling ruddy cloud cover. Elsewhere a storm lifted like a dark wall on which lightning scribbled. The dense atmosphere brought its thunder-noise to Dalmady as a high drumroll. He paid scant attention. The gusts that hooted around his car, the fair pockets into which it lurched, made piloting a full-time job. A cybernated vehicle would have been too expensive for this niggardly rewarding planet.

  “There!” cried the Master. He squatted with the Translator in an after compartment, which was left under native conditions and possessed an observation dome. In deference to his superstitions, or whatever they were, only the audio part of the intercom was turned on.

  “Indeed,” the Translator said more calmly. “I descry it now. Somewhat to our right, Factor—in a valley by a lake…do you see?”

  “A moment.” Dalmady locked the altitude controls. The car would bounce around till his teeth rattled, but the grav field wouldn’t let it crash. He leaned forward in his harness, tried to ignore the brutal pull on him, and adjusted the scanner screen. His race had not evolved to see at those wavelengths which penetrated this atmosphere best; and the distance was considerable, as distances tend to be on a subjovian.

  Converting light frequencies, amplifying, magnifying, the screen flung a picture at him. Tall above shrubs and turbulent ammonia stood a spaceship. He identified it as a Holbert-X freighter, a type commonly sold to hydrogen breathers. There had doubtless been some modifications to suit its particular home world, but he saw none except a gun turret and a couple of missile tube housings.

  A prefabricated steel and ferrocrete building was being assembled nearby. The construction robots must be working fast, without pause; the cube was already more than half finished. Dalmady glimpsed flares of energy torches, like tiny blue novas. He couldn’t make out individual shapes, and didn’t want to risk coming near enough.

  “You see?” he asked the image of Peter Thorson, and transmitted the picture to another screen.

  Back at the base, his engineer’s massive head nodded. Behind could be seen the four remaining humans. They looked as strained and anxious as Dalmady felt, Yvonne perhaps more so.

  “Yeh. Not much we can do about it,” Thorson declared. “They pack bigger weapons. And see, in the corners of the barn, those bays? That’s for blast cannon, I swear. Add a heavy-duty forcefield generator for passive defense, and it’s a nut we can’t hope to crack.”

  “The home office—”

  “Yeh, they might elect to resent the invasion and dispatch a regular warcraft or three. But I don’t believe it. Wouldn’t pay, in economic terms. And it’d make every kind of hooraw, because remember, SSL hasn’t got any legal monopoly here.” Thorson shrugged. “My guess is, Old Nick’ll simply close down on Suleiman, probably wangling a deal with the Baburites that’ll cut his losses and figuring to diddle them good at a later date.” He was a veteran mercantile professional, accustomed to occasional setbacks, indifferent to the scientific puzzles around him.

  Yvonne, who was not, cried softly. “Oh, no! We can’t. The insights we’re gaining—”

  And Dalmady, who could not afford a defeat this early in his career, clenched one fist and snapped, “We can at least talk to them, can’t we? I’ll try to raise them. Stand by.” He switched the outercom to a universal band and set the Come In going. The last thing he had seen from the compound was her stricken eyes.

  The Translator inquired from aft: “Do you know who the strangers are—and what they intend, Factor?”

  “I have no doubt they come from Babur, as we call it,” the man replied absently. “That is a world”—the more enlightened Coast dwellers had acquired some knowledge of astronomy—“akin to yours. It is larger and warmer, with heavier air. Its folk could not endure this one for long without becoming sick. But they can move about unarmored for a while. They buy most of our bluejack. Evidently they have decided to go to the source.”

  “But why, Factor?”

  “For profit, I suppose, Translator.” Maybe just in their nonhuman cost accounting. That’s a giant investment they’re making in a medicinal product. But they don’t operate under capitalism, under anything that human history ever saw, or so I’ve heard. Therefore they may consider it an investment in…empire? No doubt they can expand their foothold here, once we’re out of the way—”