He ushered him down a hallway. At the other end they entered a room as wide as the house, which was fairly wide. It was nothing special, nor were its furnishings; it was the view that made it expensive. The east-facing wall was glass, opening onto a narrow strip of balcony. Beyond its polished bronze railing, Ananporu and its suburbs spread below them like a field of scintillant, multi-colored jewels. The cab had climbed higher than he'd thought, Veeri realized-they had to be more than a 1,000 feet above the city. He pulled his eyes away, to the major and captain who'd gotten to their feet. The captain he knew-Alivii Simnasaveesi, who'd delivered the invitation. The other, a rather small major who projected an unusual sense of power, had an unmarked forehead, and Veeri realized that this man was his host.

The captain introduced them, and Meksorli shook Veeri's hand. "Colonel Thoglakaveera! It's a pleasure to have you here. Would you care for a drink? We can cover most tastes."

Veeri chose whiskey on ice. He preferred to stay in control of his mind and tongue, and with whiskey on ice he could better monitor and limit his intake. While the serving man got his drink, Veeri glanced around at the other guests. They were all looking at him, but with no sign of sympathy or amusement. Only interest.

One, the oldest, wore colonel's gold hammers, like his own. Two others were majors, both older than Meksorli. The rest were captains and full lieutenants, except for the sublieutenant who'd served as door greeter. There were no women. Apparently no more guests were expected; at any rate Veeri'd been guided to the last of the chairs arranged in an oval.

It occurred to him that he was not only a guest; he was the program. His chair was at one end of the oval, and everyone was facing him.

"So, Colonel," said Meksorli, "what was it like on the alien world?"

Veeri was a willing liar, but not a compulsive one. This time he told the truth pretty much as he knew it. "Basically," he said, "it isn't so different from Varatos or Klestron. The gravity's stronger, but not oppressively strong for a man in decent condition. And planetwide it's cooler, rather like Kathvoktos or Chithvoktos, but we were practically on the equator, so the climate was quite comfortable.

"Probably the biggest difference was the population; there wasn't much. The biggest town had only about fifteen thousand, something like that."

The reactions were mixed; some looked surprised, some puzzled, some eager. "How do they get by with so few?" someone asked. "How do they maintain their technology? Their civilization?"

Veeri began to warm up at that: he enjoyed being looked to as the expert. "It seems that the world we found-it's called Terfreya-is a very minor planet. Not even a minor associate in the Confederation; it's what they call a 'trade world.' They raise a single export crop there, a spice, and beyond that some livestock and food crops for local use. Most of the planet's a wilderness, complete with large beasts of prey."

"Damn!" said another. "We could make a lot better use of it than that."

There was voiced agreement. Then the Vartosu colonel spoke. "I heard you had some hard fighting. What was that like?"

"It's-not easy to describe, but hard is an understatement. Of course, we were only a light brigade. And there's a lot we never did learn about the forces we fought. Even the local officials knew very little about them. Some, the initial force, were cadets who'd been training on Terfreya. They were fearless and full of tricks, but their weaponry was inferior. We'd killed a lot of them, and markedly reduced their attacks, when another force, not cadets, arrived from somewhere. This was after a couple of months. These were also extremely good troops, but they were a very light force-no weapons a man couldn't carry, except gunships. They did have gunships, though not as fast or as powerful as ours.

"We'd made captives of some local officials-had them on the flagship under instrumented interrogation for months-and they knew nothing at all about this new force. We pretty much decided they must have landed from outside the system-the new troops, that is. Maybe for training, like the cadets. Though how they did it without being noticed is a bit of a puzzler. The assumption is that they entered real space far enough out in the system that their emergence waves were too weak to pick up. That sort of thing can happen, with careless astrogation. Meanwhile the navy'd impounded Terfreya's homing beacon to study its technology, and its absence could have warned the Confederation ship that something might be wrong. Then they could have used a blindside approach, and with enough luck, landed undetected.

"Unfortunately, the captive officials were provincial-the whole world was-and not as well informed as we'd expected. None of them was what you'd call knowledgeable about military or technical matters.

"We did learn somewhat about their ships from them, of course, and more from examining some message pods we captured on the ground. Their hyper-space generators are a lot like ours-operate on the same principle. I suppose it's the only way. And a ship that we know arrived in-system while we were there produced typical emergence waves. Our flagship detected it at once, and when it arrived within range, we blew it up with no trouble at all."

Veeri shrugged. "As for general information: They have a lot more worlds-twenty-seven main worlds and about twice as many inhabited tributary worlds. All told about seven times as many as we have." He was aware of the impression-even shock-that this caused among the imperial officers. "But apparently," he went on, "their population doesn't outnumber ours nearly that much. And while they have some very good troops, the Confederation isn't warlike. Their individual worlds have no warships at all.

"The major points are, their fleet is little or no bigger than ours-that's pretty definite-and they don't seem even to know about force shields. Which means they wouldn't stand a chance against an imperial fleet in a fight. And if we destroyed their fleet, it wouldn't make much difference how good their ground forces are. We could concentrate overwhelming attacks wherever we liked, and mop them up piecemeal."

Veeri fielded a number of questions over the next half hour, but mainly his answers just elaborated what he'd already said. When it became apparent that they'd pretty much exhausted his data fund, the conversation drifted to other matters. Then a captain asked why their war prisoners hadn't answered some of the unknowns and uncertainties. "I can understand civilian officials not knowing some of these things," he said. "Especially on a minor, backward world. But a military officer should have."

Veeri nodded. "And no doubt would have. But as I said, they refused to surrender; fought to the death. And early on, our men discovered that what looked like a wounded and unconscious enemy was likely to be one feigning unconsciousness. With an armed grenade ready to release when someone got close. So-Well, you know peasants. Our troops routinely shot up any enemy casualties not obviously already dead. Sometimes even those that were."

There was a moment without comment, some of the Vartosu officers finding it hard to accept that at least a few war prisoners hadn't been taken.

"I understand one prisoner was brought back," the Vartosu colonel commented. "A female, whose memory was burned out in an accident during interrogation. In an equipment malfunction, as I heard it."

Turning cautious, Veeri only nodded. "So I'm told," he said. Which wasn't a blatant lie; merely misleading.

"I heard that, too," Meksorli said. "She's supposed to be very beautiful."

Captain Simnasaveesi had something to add. "I've heard," he said, "that the Kalif plans to marry her."