«You mean – Todd?» Reeve spluttered, caught between indignation and amusement.

Pat nodded as solemnly as she could, trying to conquer the desire to laugh aloud at the look on her husband's face.

"The capsule came five minutes after their exhaust trail dissipated." Pat gave up the effort and grinned broadly as she added, "Macy said the captain cut it awful fine.

Pat's laugh had a contagious quality and Ken found himself unable to resist joining in.

“I never thought I'd be grateful to Todd for anything,” Pat sighed, her face abruptly twisted with perplexity. “You'd better get along to the office.”

They had crossed the bridge by then and she gave him a loving kiss and a gentle shove toward the building.

Hu Shih and Lee Lawrence were sitting at the metropologist's desk when Ken entered. They were looking at each other in a dazed stare, the microfilm reader on the table in front of them.

“Thank God, Ken, maybe you can make some sense out of this,” Lee said, jumping to his feet and shoving the reader to him.

The message film was from Codep and Ken scanned it quickly. Then he reread it slowly, word for word.

“Are they serious?” he demanded.

"You see?" Lawrence crowed triumphantly. "He's confused, too.

Hu Shih shook his head slowly,

"They say," Lawrence began in a mocking singsong, "this planet cannot possibly be populated. They say, the most thorough search was carried out according to strict Spacedep and Alreldep exploratory techniques. They say, see appendix." Lee paced up and down the room, swatting a closed fist into the palm of the other hand. "They say, make no effort to communicate with natives until trained personnel can be transported to the affected area. I love that, 'affected area.' What does he think natives are? A disease?

“Oh, and do you appreciate the next paragraph in this epitome of departmentalese?” Lawrence asked sarcastically, leaning his hands on the desk and rocking back and forth. “They say, compile language tapes for semanticizing. How'n'ell can you do that without contacting natives whom they insist cannot be here in the first place?”

Ken ran the message a third time and came to the final, thoroughly ridiculous section.

“I also notice that they wish us to retain the colony ship when it arrives and depart, bag, baggage and live-stock, to avoid premature culture penetration with these same non-existent natives.”

«Oh, how – how shall I explain? What can I say to justify our actions?» murmured Hu Shih. «What we have done seemed so logical considering our position.»

«Shih,» and Lawrence gave the conscience stricken metropologist a gentle shake on the shoulder, «you did what any sensible man would do. And you can't tell me that the men – if they are thinking men – who wrote this contradictory garbage are sensible. They sound like dithering idiots, scared silly and looking for somewhere to hide. No,» and Lawrence stalked around the room again. «We have made an impact on a sentient species, but in all my studies of cultures, e.t. and Terran, I have never heard of a race that absorbed that impact with less outward effect. They have met us as equals, and they had succeeded in counting coup – if I may inject an old Amerind simile – on us several times for all our culturally advanced level. No, Doctor, put away the sack cloth and ashes. Don't beat your breast or commit ceremonial suicide with remorse. The fault lies with Space-dep, or Alreldep or Codep; not with us. And I'll be damned if I'll take the blame for it – or if I will try to act on orders filmed on such a screw-up, illogical, inconsistent wisp of mylar. Besides,» he said in an abrupt change, «the fat's already in the fire. We've done everything they said not to do and not done practically everything they said to do.»

“Captain Kiachif should have waited,” Hu Shih said to himself in an anxious tone. “I knew he should have waited.”

Lawrence shot a glance at Ken.

“I doubt any of us could have persuaded him, short of physical restraint, once his radar screen showed the approach of the capsule.”

A low hum filled the room, emanating from the equipment which controlled the homing device of the message capsules.

“Another one?” Lawrence demanded and leaned out the door, shading his eyes to watch the homing tower at the center of the landing field. Reeve joined him, scanning the sky with his binoculars until he caught the flash of metal in the sun.

“Sure is!”

This message was from the Alien Relations Department. It was more coherent than Codep's burble, but it too warned against the heinous crime of too premature an introduction of Terran culture to a less advanced race, with a list of the penalties attached to such illegal intercourse. It also demanded in official requestese that a detailed report on the 'observed' natives be forwarded by return capsule.

«In other words, we should never have so much as exposed a fingernail within their sight – which is long range,» Lawrence snapped. «I'm not an alien relations expert but I am a sociologist and these people – well they're people,» he ended lamely. «Say, did we ever mention that we saw them first?» he asked.

“Well, as a matter of fact,” Reeve answered after a moment's rapid consideration, “they advanced on me, not me on them,” and he grinned, remembering the headlong dash of the two cubs in pursuit of their ball.

“All right then,” Lawrence said briskly. “They found us. Particularly if this puts a different complexion on our culpability.”

“Yes, yes, it does. Or does it?” asked Hu Shih, rising briefly to hope before plunging back into despair, washing his hands. “Oh, why, why?” he cried, rising wearily from his chair. “We had made a good beginning here in spite of that terrible long winter.” He crossed to the window to gaze wistfully out at the vividly green Common, down to the river with its backdrop of the great mountain range. A prospect, a sweeping view no longer to be found on Earth even in the dozen carefully preserved Square Miles. “We must leave. And it would have been a better, cleaner break to have left this morning. Now, each day will make it harder.”

He saw the rebellious expressions of his aides and shook his head sadly.

“And we must leave, gentlemen. If we cannot, in this difficult situation, uphold principles we have sworn to respect, then we are not one jot better than those barbaric, genocidal ancestors whose action toward minorities we have always deplored. We solved our own inter-racial problems only by Amalgamation. We solved the domination and destruction of alien species by the Principle of Non-Cohabitation. This is the first time that Principle has come to the test. This is the first time since the Siwannese Tragedy that we have come face to face with another sentient species. And our decision here on Doona is critical. We cannot fail this test.”

Reeve and Lawrence stood silently before the little colony chief. Never in their three years of association with him had they doubted his qualities of leadership or disregarded his gently given orders. But that had been as much due to conditioned respect for authority as for the man himself. Now they saw the inner firmness of moral rectitude that unmistakably marked him both man and leader.

''It has been said,'' Hu Shih continued, ''that there is always a solution to every problem but not necessarily an agreeable one. One asks for wisdom and courage to accept the difficult solutions. For us, that is to return to Earth, stifling vain regrets, terrible disappointment, wrapping ourselves in the knowledge that, by our fortitude, we are redeeming the noblest aspirations of all mankind."

The metropologist took his aides by the arms.

"I look to both of you to support me as you always have done. We shall have trying days ahead of us. Both among ourselves and," he nodded toward the two messages, "with the departments that interest themselves in us.