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"Oh. But-"
Jesus shook his head. "I am not sure this is a good idea," he said.
"I'll be fine," Ursula insisted.
"Perhaps. But we have no wish to cause you embarrassment. You need not reveal anything at all about your previous experience. Merely tell them that you were recruited on Tanith, and you have been sent to the University for formal training. Then be careful, because you will almost certainly be approached by the enemy in the hopes that you will let slip something of value."
"Only I don't know anything-"
"That is not strictly true," Jesus said. "In any event, I think I can guarantee that at least one of those who pays attention to you will have ulterior reasons. What you do about that is your business, but be certain, we are not asking you to play Mata Hari."
"Would it help if I tried?" Ursula asked.
"My dear," Catherine said, "I should think you know the answer to that. The Legion needs nice, healthy young officers, not psychological wrecks. Learn and observe, that's all. We're soldiers, not spies."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Crofton's Encyclopedia of the Inhabited Planets (2nd Edition):
Aegean, sea. [Ae-ge-an], named for enclosed portion of eastern Mediterranean, Earth. (see names, Mythological, Graeco-Roman) One of two linked inland seas on the planet Sparta (see Sparta];
The Aegean, with the larger Oinos sea (q.v.) to the south, forms the great inland embayment which separates the northern and southern lobes of the Serpentine Continent, Sparta's principal landmass. Roughly rectangular in shape, the Aegean covers approximately 510,000 sq. kilometers; geological investigation shows that it was formed by a complex process of subsidence, attendant on the crustal plate movements which accompanied the raising of the Drakon Mountains (q.v.). In general terms, the Aegean is therefore relatively warm, shallow (few areas over 500 meters depth) and characterized by a rough balance between sediment deposition and subsidence of the sea floor. Characteristic terrain on all sides of the Aegean consists of coastal plains of varying width, backed by hills or mountains; the northeastern corner offers a lowland corridor to the valley of the Middle Eurotas (q.v.) The main river draining into the Aegean is the Eurotas, which reverses its lower course and drains northward through its delta into Constitution Bay (q.v.), a nearly circular impact crater associated with an asteroid collision of circa 50,000 BCE. The large volcanic islands of Zakynthos (q.v.), Leros (q.v.), Keos, (q.v.) New Crete (q.v.) and Mytilene (q.v.) are products of the same astrophysical event.
Marine life is abundant, and is based on native equivalents of plankton. Common species include the grunter, notable for its great numbers and resemblance to the terrestrial cod, the multiclawed rockcrawler, much in demand as a delicacy offworld, and the torpedofish, a predatory species up to 10 meters in length, which attacks its prey by ramming with its bone-armored nose. All vertebrate piscoids are gill-breathers but have pseudomammalian features such as four-chambered hearts, and are viviparous. The tangler kelp is the sole source of Ez-e-MindTM, Lederle AG's vastly profitable "morning after" contraceptive. Introduced terrestrial species include the common dolphin and the orca (killer whale), both wild and domesticated.
We have fed our sea for a thousand years And she calls us, still unfed, Though there's never a wave of all her waves But marks our English dead:
We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest, To the shark and the sheering gull.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!
Steven Armstrong pushed his chair back from the table and loosened his belt. Been doing that a lot lately, he thought. Growing a bit of a pot, to offset the massive shoulders and bull neck and the barrel chest that bulged out his roll-necked sweater… He gri
There was a cheer from all the tables he had rented in the Neptune; hearty cheers, though nobody had been drinking more than enough to put a little edge on. Most of them would be sailing with him in an hour or so, after all. All eyes had turned to his wife at the other end of the table. Alicia Armstrong was smiling and wiping at her eyes at the same time, as the guests began to applaud her. She was a round-faced woman with a close-cropped head of tightly curled hair, and eggplant-black skin that set off her gold seashell earrings. Three children from four to ten were seated next to her; they leaped up and began clapping too, with high-pitched shouts of "Mommy! Mommy!"
"I-" she began, as cries of "speech, speech" rang through the taproom. Then: "Oh, let Steven make the speech-he likes doing it."
More laughter; Steven Armstrong had been Senator-legate of the Maritime Products Trade Association for a year now, and was famous for a rhetorical style that included thumping lecterns hard enough to break the wood at Pragmatist rallies.
"OK, I promise not to damage Mrs. Kekkonen's tables, at least," he began, looking around until he caught the proprietor's eye and winked. She winked back; the Armstrongs and the Neptune I
"Shut up, Sven. Where was I… Armstrong amp; Armstrong's come a long way," he said. "When Alicia and I got married, we honeymooned here at the Neptune because we couldn't afford anything else-" "Well!" the widow Kekkonen said, mock-indignant.
"-and all we had was these hands"-he held them up; massive and reddened, scarred and callused with hooks and nets and lines-"Alicia's brains and one rickety overgrown dory with an engine that worked, sometimes. I busted my butt, and Alicia kept books better than the computer we couldn't afford-found out that the Meijians would pay through their noses for rockcrawler claws-and we saved every pe
Cheers and jeers; nobody much liked the secretive and cla
"I'd like to thank everyone who helped make it possible," he went on. "Even Consolidated Hume Financial." More laughter, sheepishly joined in by the representative of the bank in his conservative brown tunic and sash and knee-breeches. Well, nobody loves a banker, Armstrong thought. Especially not on a planet starved for capital and with a strict hard-money policy. "And the great people from Huang, Lee and Parkinson." The shipbuilders; his sincerity came through. "My friends from the Association, who paid as the only way to shut me up and get me out of Sparta City"-cries of protest and a few half-eaten rolls flew past his ears, with the odd "damn straight"-"and most of all, my wife.