“Good evening, sir, good evening,” I said as I slipped into the seat next to him. “A pleasure to travel with you.”

He aimed the twin cannons of his nose at me and fired a broadside snort that signaled a close to the recently opened conversation. I smiled in return and buckled my belt and was slammed back into the cushions as the SST buried itself into the night sky. At cruising altitude most of the wing area slipped back into the hull and I took out my pocket flask and detached the two small cups.

“It would be a pleasure to offer you a drink of refreshment, noble flight-major, in gratitude for your many services rendered to the glorious cause of Cliaand.”

This time he did not even bother to grunt, but instead picked at his teeth with a none too clean pinky nail until he extracted a fragment of meat from his recent dinner. Close examination convinced him that it was too large to discard so he re-ingested it with a certain relish. A man of simple pleasures. I offered a better one.

“Nothing too good for our boys in the service. This is narcolethe.” I sipped at the cup and smacked my lips.

He looked directly at me for the first time and there should have been little splintering sounds as his lips moved slowly into an unaccustomed smile.

“I’ll drink that,” he said in a grating voice, and well he should since the small flask of liqueur would have cost him a month’s salary. Narcolethe, the finest drink known to mankind, distilled in small quantities from a scarce botanical on a minor planet at the galaxy’s rim. Soothing, charming, subtle, intoxicating, inspiring, aphrodisiac, stimulating. It was everything any other drink was, plus much more, with no side effects and no hangover. He took the proffered cup and lowered the caverns of his nose over it and sipped.

“Not bad, “ he said, and I smiled at this crude understatement as though it were sincerest flattery and offered him the false name I had assumed. He thought about it and realized that an exchange was in order.

“Flight-Major Vaska Hulja.”

“The pleasure is mine, sir, the pleasure is mine. May I top that up for you, these cups are so small.”

Very soon, as our razor nosed craft cracked the sound barrier and boomed through the sleep of the dozing citizens on the ground, I came to almost love the flight-major. He was perfect, all-around, with no bulges of doubt or pockmarks of uncertainty. Just as a spider is a perfect spider or a vampire bat a perfect vampire bat, he was a perfect freewheeling bastard. As his spirits lifted and his tongue grew thick the anecdotes became more detailed. The flight-major on strafing:

“Never make mistake of going after individuals or small groups, it is overall effect that counts. Stay to plan, hit buildings and grouped vehicles, finish the run. On a second run it’s all right to hit groups of people, but only big ones, with firebombs. That spreads and splatters and gets the most.”

The flight-major on recreation:

“There was just the two of us and we had maybe a dozen bottles and case of weedstick, enough for couple of days, so we got these three girls, one as spare, you know, just in case, and took them…”

The flight-major on offworlders:

“Animals. You can’t tell me we can even interbreed with them. Obvious that Cliaand is source of all intelligent life in the universe and only civilizing influence.”

There was more like this and I could only nod my head in rapt attention. Perfect, as I said. What had me almost pulsating with joy was the information that he had just been assigned to the Glupost station after his R & R. This was his first visit to the immense base after years of duty on the fighting front. Destiny was controlling the fall of the dice.

What I had to do next was dangerous and involved a great deal of risk—but the opportunity presented was too good to miss. In the weeks that I had been exploring the details of the Cliaand society I had come to know it in great depth. I thought. Now was the time to find out how much I really did know. For the part of society I had picked my way through was just the periphery, the non-military part and the military was the one that really counted. It dominated this world in every way and had managed to extend its dominance to other worlds as well. Despite the rules of logic, the inverse square, and history. I was going to have to apply my little bit of know-how to crack the final barrier.

I was joining the army. Enlisting in the Space Armada. With the rank of flight-major. As the ship tilted into its landing approach I put thought into deed.

“Must you report to duty at once, Vaska?” Strong drink had put us on a first name basis. He shook his head in a shaggy no.

“Tomorrow I am due.”

“Wonderful. You do not wish to spend your last night of leave between the cold sheets of a solitary bed in the B. O. Q. Just think what else could be accomplished in the same time.”

I went into some imaginary detail of what could be done with silken sheets in an un-solitary bed. Good food and fine drink were mentioned as well, but these were only of contingent interest. The flask lilted once more and he nodded cheerful agreement to my plan.

As soon as we had landed and our baggage had been disgorged, a robocab took us to the Dosadan-GIup Robotnik. This was the local branch of a planet-wide chain of hotels that specialized in non-human service. Everything was mechanized and computerized. Human beings presumably visited them once in a while to check the gauges and empty the tills, but I had never seen one although I had used these hotels quite often, for many obvious reasons. I had occasionally seen other guests entering or leaving but we had avoided each other’s gaze like plague carriers. The Robotniks were islands of privacy in a sea of staring eyes. They had certain drawbacks, but I had long since learned to cope with these. To the Robotnik we went.

The front door opened automatically when we approached and a sort of motorized-dolly robot slipped out of its kennel and sang to us.

“World famous since the day we opened,

The Dosadan-GIup Robotnik welcomes you.

I am here to take your luggage —

Order me and I’ll help you!”

This was sung in a rich contralto voice to the accompaniment of a 200 piece brass band; a standard recording of all the Robotnik hotels. I hated it. I kicked the robot back, it was pressing close to our ankles, and pointed to the robocab.

“Luggage. There. Five pieces. Fetch.”

It hummed away and plunged eager tentacles into the cab. We entered the hotel.

“Don’t we have four pieces luggage?” Vaska asked, frowning those beetling eyebrows in thought.

“You’re right, I must have miscounted.” The luggage robot caught up and passed us, with our suitcases and the back seat torn out of the cab. “We have five now.”

“Good evening… gentlemen,” the robot at the desk murmured, with a certain hesitation before the final word as it counted us and compared profiles in its memory bank. “How may we serve you?”

“The best suite in the house,” I said as I signed a fictitious name and address and began to feed 100 boginje bills into the pay slot on the desk. Cash in advance was the rule at the Robotnik with any balance returned upon departure. A bellboy robot, armed with a key, rolled out and showed us the way, throwing the door wide with a blare of recorded trumpets as though it were announcing the second coming.

“Very nice,” I said and pressed the button labeled ftp on its chest which automatically deducted two boginjes from my credit balance.

“Order us some drinks and food,” I told the flight-major, pointing to the menu built into the wall. “Anything you wish as long as there are steaks and champagne.”

He liked that idea and he was busily punching buttons while I arranged the luggage. I also had a bug-detector strapped to my wrist which led me unerringly to the single optic-sonic bug. It was in the same place as every other one I had found, these hotels really were standardized, and I managed to move a chair in front of it when I opened my suitcase.