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mankind to each other they were tigers. And common sense dictated that you did
not pen two tigers alone together for two weeks; for a delicate mission on
which the future existence of the human race might depend. Already, after nine
days out
"We'll have to go meet the Chedal." It was Mial, reentering the room. Ty
turned reflexively to face him.
The other man was scarcely a dozen years older than Ty; and in many ways they
were nearly alike.
There could not be half an inch or five pounds of weight difference between
them, thought Ty. Like Ty, Mial was square-shouldered and leanly built. But
his hair was dark where Ty's was blond: and that dark hair had started to
recede. The face below it was handsome, rather than big-boned and open like
Ty's.
Mial, at thirty-six, was something of a wonder boy in politics back on Earth.
Barely old enough for the senatorial seat he held, he had the respect of
almost everyone. But he had been legal counsel for some unsavory groups in the
beginning of his career. He would know how, thought Ty watching him now, to
fight dirty if he had to. And the two of them were off with none but aliens to
witness.
* * *
"I know," said Ty now, harshly. He turned to follow Mial as the other man
started out of the room.
"What about Annie?"
Mial looked back over his shoulder.
"She's safe enough. What good's a machine to them if no one but a human can
run her?" Mial's voice was almost taunting. "You can't go up with the big
boys, Ross, and act scared."
Ty's face flushed with internal heat but it was true, what Mial had said. A
midget trying to make peace with giants did well not to act doubtful or
afraid. Mial had courage to see it. Ty felt an unwilling touch of admiration
for the man. I could almost like him for that, he thought if I didn't hate his
guts.
By the time they got to the airlock, the slim, dog-faced, and darkly-robed
Laburti were in their receiving line, and the first of the squat,
yellow-furred Chedal forms were coming through. First came the guards; then
the Observer himself, distinguishable to a human eye only by the sky-blue
harness he wore.
The tall, thin form of the robed Laburti Captain glided forward to welcome him
aboard first; and then the
Observer moved down the line, to confront Mial.
A high-pitched chattering came from the Chedal's lipless slit of a mouth,
almost instantly overridden by the artificial, translated human speech from
the black translator collar around the alien's thick, yellow-furred neck.
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Shortly, Mial was replying in kind, his own black translator collar turning
his human words into Chedal chitterings. Ty stood listening, half-self
conscious, half-bored.
" and my Demonstration Operator." Ty woke suddenly to the fact that Mial was
introducing him to the Chedal.
"Honored," said Ty, and heard his collar translating.
"May I invite you both to my suite now, immediately, for the purpose of
improving our acquaintance . . ." The invitation extended itself, became
flowery, and ended with a flourish.
"It's an honor to accept . . ." Mial was answering. Ty braced himself for at
least another hour of this before they could get back to their own suite.
Then his breath caught in his throat.
" . . . for myself, that is," Mial was completing his answer. "Unfortunately,
I earlier ordered my
Operator to return immediately to his device, once these greetings were over.
And I make it a practice never to change an order. I'm sure you understand."
"Of course. Some other time I will host your Operator. Shall we two go?" The
Chedal turned and led off. Mial was turning with him, when Ty stepped in front
of him.
"Hold on " Ty remembered to turn off his translator collar. "What's this about
your ordering me
"
Mial flicked off his own translator collar.
"You heard me," he said. He stepped around Ty and walked off. Ty stood,
staring after him. Then, conscious of the gazing Laburti all about him, he
turned and headed back toward their own suite.
Once back there, and with the door to the ship's corridor safely closed behind
him, he swore and turned to checking out Annie, to make sure there had been no
investigation or tampering with her innards while he was absent. Taking off
the side panel of her case, he pinched his finger between the panel and the
case and swore again. Then he sat down suddenly, ignoring Annie and began to
think.
II
With the jab of pain from the pinched finger, an incredible suspicion had
sprung, full-armed into his brain. For the first time he found himself
wondering if Mial's lie to the Chedal about an 'order' to Ty had been part of
some plan by the other man against Ty. A plan that required Mial's talking
with the Chedal
Observer alone, before Ty did.
It was, Ty had to admit, the kind of suspicion that only someone who felt as
he did about Mial could have dreamed up. And yet . . .
The orders putting the Annie Demonstration Mission which meant Annie and
Ty under the authority of Mial had been merely a polite fiction. A matter of
matching the high rank and authority of the
Laburti and Chedal officials who would be watching the Demonstration as
Observers. Ty had been clearly given to understand that by his own Department
chief, back on Earth.
In other words, Mial had just now stopped playing according to the unwritten
rules of the Mission.
That might bode ill for Ty. And, thought Ty now, suddenly, it might bode even
worse for the success of the Mission. But it was unthinkable that Mial would
go so far as to risk that.
For, it was one thing to stand here with Annie and know she represented
something possessed by neither the Laburti nor the Chedal technologies. It was
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