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“He hadn’t up to half an hour ago,” replied Mersereau.

“Then I strongly advise that we suggest it to him.”

Aucoin nodded agreement, and glanced at the woman. “Your job, I’d say, Easy.”

“If someone hasn’t beaten me to it.” She rose, pinched Ib’s ear in passing, and left the room.

“Next point,” Hoffman went on, “Granting that you may be right in opposing a rescue expedition from the Settlement, I think it’s time Barle

“Why as for more trouble that we need?” retorted Aucoin. “I don’t like to argue with anyone, especially when he doesn’t really have to listen to me.”

“I don’t think you’ll really have to. Remember, he agreed with us the other time.”

“You were saying a few minutes ago that you weren’t sure how sincere his agreements have been.”

“I’m not, in general; but if he had been strongly against us that time he’d have done just what he wanted, and sent a crew out to help the Esket. He did, remember, on a couple of other occasions when there was a cruiser in trouble.”

“That was much closer to the settlement, and we finally approved the action,” retorted Aucoin.

“And you know as well as I do that we approved it because we could see that he was going to do it anyway.”

“We approved it, Ib, because your wife was on Barle

“Whose side was she on during the Esket argument? I still think we should tell Barle

“I wouldn’t call it censoring. We’ve never changed a thing.”

“But you have delayed the relay plenty of times while you decided what he ought to know, and as I’ve said before I don’t think that’s the game as we agreed to play it with him. Pardon my reactionary sentiments, but on purely selfish grounds we’d be well advised to keep his confidence as long as possible.”

Several of the others, who had listened in silence up to this point, spoke up almost at once when Hoffman expressed this sentiment. It took Aucoin several seconds to untangle their words, but it eventually became clear that the feeling of the group was with Ib. The chairman yielded gracefully; his technique did not involve standing in front of the bull.

“All right, we pass on the complete report to Barle

One of the men who had done little but listen up to this point asked a question. “Forgive me if I didn’t follow you too clearly a few minutes ago. Ib, you and Alan both claim that Barle

Hoffman shook his head. “No. The arguments we used for their necessity were good, and the only surprising thing to me was that Barle

But Mesklinites are acrophobic by nature. The thought of flying, to anyone from a world like that, must be just unimaginable.”

Ib smiled grimly. “True. But one of the first things Barle

“I agree,” Aucoin interjected. “And I think we’re ru

“That’s where mine have been.” It was the same speaker. “I keep wondering about the Esket, every time one of the cruisers runs into trouble — even when the trouble is obviously natural.”

“So do we all, I imagine,” rejoined Aucoin.

“The more I think of it, the more I feel that her crew must have run into intelligent opposition. After all, we know there is life on Dhrawn — more than the bushes and pseudo-algae the Mesklinites have found. They wouldn’t account quantitatively for that atmosphere; there must be a complete ecological complex somewhere. I’d guess in the higher-temperature regions.”

“Such as Low Alpha.” Hoffman completed the thought. “Yes, you don’t have ammonia and free oxygen in the same environment for very long, on the time scale of a planet. I can believe the possibility of an intelligent species here; we haven’t found any sign of it from space, and the Mesklinite ground parties haven’t met it — unless the Esket did — but seventeen billion square miles of planet make a lot of good reasons for that. The idea is plausible, and you’re not the first to get it, but I don’t know where it leaves us. Barle

“Why not?” cut in Mersereau. “If we could get in touch with natives as we did on Mesklin, the project could rally get going! We wouldn’t have to depend so completely on… oh.”

Aucoin smiled grimly.

“Precisely,” he said. “Now you have found a good reason for wondering about Barle

“There is another point, thought,” Hoffman said thoughtfully.

“What?”

“I’m not sure its worth mentioning, since we can’t evaluate it; but the Kwembly is commanded by Dondragmer, who is a long-time associate of Barle

“I’ve wondered about that, too,” the chief pla

“A fusion converter would keep a good, large heating coil going, and resistors aren’t very complex equipment,” Mersereau pointed out. “Heaters aren’t a very unreasonable piece of equipment on Dhrawn, either. If only—”

“But we didn’t,” interrupted Aucoin.

“But we did, if you’d let me finish. There are enough converters with the Kwembly to life her off the planet if their energy could be applied to such a job. There must be some metal aboard which can be jury-rigged into resistors, or arcs. Whether the Mesklinites could operate such gadgets I don’t know — there must be a limit even to their temperature tolerance — but we might at least ask if they’ve thought of such a thing.”