he's been currying
favor with the urban merchants; that makes him as pro-Rakkeed and as
anti-Terran as they are. At Krink, King Jonkvank has the support of
his barons, but he's afraid of his urban bourgeoisie, and we pay him a
handsome subsidy, so he's pro-Terran and anti-Rakkeed. At Skilk,
Rakkeed comes and goes openly; at Krink he has a price on his head."

"Jonkvank is not one of the assets we boast about too loudly,"
Hideyoshi O'Leary said, pausing on his way from the table. "He's as
bloody-minded an old murderer as you'd care not to meet in a dark
alley anywhere."

"We can turn our backs on him and not expect a knife between our
shoulders, anyhow," von Schlichten said. "And we can believe, oh, up
to eighty percent of what he tells us, and that's sixty percent better
than any of the other native princes, except King Kankad, of course.
The Kragans are the only real friends we have on this planet." He
thought for a moment. "Miss Quinton, are you doing sociographic
research-work here, in addition to your Ex-Rights work?" he asked.
"Well, let me advise you to pay some attention to the Kragans. You'll
only find them treated at any length at all in that compendium of
misinformation, Willard Stanley-Browne's _Short Sociographic History
of Beta Hydrae II_, and ninety percent of what Stanley-Browne says
about them is completely erroneous."

"Oh, but they're just a parasite-race on the Terrans," Dr. Paula
Quinton objected. "You find races like that all through the explored
galaxy--pathetic cultural mongrels."

Both men laughed heartily. Colonel O'Leary, returning with the jugs,
wanted to know what he'd missed. Blount told him.

"Ha! She's been reading that thing of Stanley-Browne's," he said.

"What's the matter with Stanley-Browne?" Paula demanded.

"Stanley-Browne is one author you can depend on," O'Leary assured her.
"If you read it in Stanley-Browne, it's wrong. You know, I don't think
she's run into many Kragans. We ought to take her over and introduce
her to King Kankad."

Von Schlichten allowed himself to be smitten by an idea. "By Allah, so
we had!" he exclaimed. "Look, you're going to Skilk, in the next week,
aren't you? Well, do you think you could get all your end-jobs cleared
up here and be ready to leave by 0800 Tuesday? That's four days from
today."

"I'm sure I could. Why?"

"Well, I'm going to Skilk, myself, with the armed troopship
_Aldebaran_. We're stopping at King Kankad's Town to pick up a
b