evagas hierarchy, which in itself would have made him very
interesting.

Trigger had run into some of the odd-ball missionaries the Devagas kept
sending about the Hub; and she'd sometimes speculated curiously
regarding the leaders of that chronically angry, unpredictable nation
which, on its twenty-eight restricted worlds, formed more than six
percent of the population of the Hub. The Devagas seemed to like nobody;
and certainly nobody liked them.

Balmordan didn't fit her picture of a Devagas leader too badly. His
manner and talk were easygoing and agreeable. But his particular brand
of ogle, when she first became aware of it, had been disquieting. Rather
like a biologist planning the details of an interesting vivisection.

Of course he _was_ a biologist.

But Trigger kept wondering why Lyad had invited him to dinner. She was
positive, for one thing, that Belchik Pluly wasn't at all happy about
Balmordan's presence.

Dinner was over before the Garth take-off, and they switched themselves
back to the mountainside and took other chairs. A red-haired,
green-eyed, tanned, sinuous young woman called Flam appeared from time
to time to renew brandy glasses and pass iced fruits around. She gave
Trigger coolly speculative looks now and then.

Then Virod showed up again with a flat tray of what turned out to be a
very special brand of tobacco. Trigger declined. The men made
connoisseur-type sounds of high appreciation, and everybody, including
Lyad, lit up small pipes of a very special brand of coral and puffed
away happily. Quillan looked up at Virod.

"Hi, big boy!" he said pleasantly. "How's everything been with you?"

Virod, in a wide-sleeved scarlet jacket and creased black trousers,
bowed his shaved bullet head very slightly. "Everything's been fine,
Major Quillan," he said. "Thank you." He turned and went out of the
place. Trigger glanced after him. Virod awed her a little--he was really
huge. Moving about among them, he had seemed like a softly padding
elephant. And there was an elephant's steady deftness in the way he held
out the tiny tobacco trays.

The Ermetyne winked at Quillan. "Quillan wrestled Virod to a pindown
once," she said to Trigger. "A fifty-seven minute round, wasn't it?"

"Thereabouts," Quillan said. He added, "Trigger doesn't know yet that I
was a sports bum in my youth."

"Really?" Trigger said.

He nodded. "Come from a long line of sports bums, as a matter of fact.
But I broke tradition