not be ashamed of us."

* * * * *

It was easy to forget that Kankad had four arms and a rubbery,
quartz-speckled skin, and a face like a lizard's.

"I want Little Me, when he's old enough to travel, to visit your
world," Kankad said. "And some of the other young ones. And when
Little Me is old enough to take over the rule of our people, I would
like to go to Terra, myself."

"You're going," von Schlichten assured him. "Some day, when I return,
I'll see that you make the trip with me."

"Wonderful, Von!" Kankad was silent for a moment. When he spoke again,
it was in Kragan, and quickly. "If we live so long, old friend. There
is trouble coming, though even my spies cannot find what that trouble
is. And two days ago in Keegark, two of my people died trying to learn
it. I ask you--be careful!"

Then he switched hastily back to the language Paula could understand,
apologizing. It gave von Schlichten time to wipe the worry from his
face before she turned back to him, though it was worse news than he
had expected. If Kankad thought things were bad enough to add his own
spies to those of the Company, things couldn't be much worse. In fact,
anything that brought whatever it was out into the open would be
better.

He was still fretting over it as they said their good-byes to Kankad
and boarded the _Aldebaran_ for Skilk.

V

The last clatter of silverware and dishes ceased as the native
servants finished clearing the table. There was a remaining clatter of
cups and saucers; liqueur-glasses tinkled, and an occasional
cigarette-lighter clicked. At the head table, the voices seemed
louder.

"... don't like it a millisol's worth," Brigadier-General Barney
Mordkovitz, the Skilk military CO, was saying to the lady on his
right. "They're too confounded meek. Nowadays, nobody yells '_Znidd
suddabit!_' at you. They just stand and look at you like a farmer
looking at a turkey the week before Christmas, and that I don't like!"

"Oh, bosh!" Jules Keaveney, the Skilk Resident-Agent, at the head of
the table, exclaimed. "If they don't bow and scrape to you and get off
the sidewalk to let you pass, you say they're insolent and need a
lesson. If they do, you say they're plotting insurrection."

"What I said," Mordkovitz repeated, "was that I expect a certain
amount of disorder, and a certain minimum show of hostility toward us
from some of these geeks, to conform to what I know to be our