With a squeal from his overworked, underpowered brakes, he pulled to a stop in front of Nesseref’s building. She got out of his motorcar with so much relief, she almost forgot the bag in which she carried her personal belongings. The Big Ugly called her back to get it. He might be maniacal, but he wasn’t larcenous.

When she got up to her apartment, Orbit greeted her with a yawn that displayed his mouthful of sharply pointed teeth. It was hard to impress a tsiongi. Had she bought a beffel, it would have danced around her and jumped up on her, squeaking wildly all the time. But a beffel would have wrecked the apartment while she was gone. Orbit didn’t do things like that.

One of the pieces of mail she’d picked up was a flyer that began, IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. The emergency it was talking about was a Deutsch attack. Nesseref began to wonder if she should have been glad to come home.

Every step Sam Yeager took out from the hub of the starship made him feel heavier. Every step he took also made him hotter; the Race favored temperatures like those of a very hot day in Los Angeles. Turning to his son, he said, “You’re dressed for the weather better than I am, that’s for sure.”

As at his previous meeting with Kassquit, Jonathan wore only a pair of shorts. He nodded and said, “You must be dying in that uniform.”

“I’ll get by.” Sam chuckled. “Kassquit’ll be better dressed for it than either one of us.” Jonathan didn’t answer that; Sam suspected he’d embarrassed his son by implying that he noticed what a woman was or wasn’t wearing.

Somewhat to his surprise, the Lizard leading them to Kassquit turned out to speak English. He said, “The whole notion of wrappings, except to protect yourselves from the nasty cold on Tosev 3, is nothing but foolishness.”

“No.” Sam made the negative hand gesture. He thought about going into the language of the Race, but decided not to; English was better suited to the subject matter. “Clothes are also part of our sexual display. Sometimes they keep us from thinking about mating, but sometimes they make us think about it.”

Had their guide been a human being, he would have sniffed. As things were, he waggled his eye turrets and spoke one dismissive word: “Foolishness.”

“Do you think so?” Jonathan Yeager asked in the language of the Race. “Would you say the same thing after you smell the pheromones of a female who has just tasted ginger?” The Lizard didn’t answer. In fact, he didn’t say another word till he’d led Sam and Jonathan to the chamber in which Kassquit sat waiting for them.

“I greet you, superior female,” Sam said in the language of the Race. His son echoed him. They both briefly assumed the posture of respect.

Kassquit got up from her seat and politely returned it. She was smoother at it than either of them, having no doubt had much more practice. “I greet you, Sam Yeager, Jonathan Yeager,” she said, and sat down again.

“It is good to see you once more,” Sam said. It was disconcerting to see so much of her; he had to work to keep his eyes on her face and not on her small, firm breasts or the slit between her legs, which looked all the more naked for being shaved. She made no move to conceal herself; she had no idea that she ought to conceal herself. Jonathan’s right, Sam thought. I’m not as used to skin as he is.

“And it is good to see both of you,” she answered seriously, innocent in her nakedness. “I shall remember your visits all the days of my life, for they are so different from anything I have known before.”

“They are different for us, too,” Jonathan said. “You live in space. To us, getting here is an adventure in itself.”

“I did not think it would be so bad,” Kassquit said in obvious dismay; adventure had connotations of hardship in the language of the Race that it lacked in English. “You came on one of our shuttlecraft, after all, and with us spaceflight is routine.”

Sam did his best to spread oil on troubled waters: “One of these days, it would be nice if you could visit us down on the surface of Tosev 3.”

“I have thought of this,” Kassquit said. “I do not yet know whether it can be arranged, or whether it would prove expedient if it can.”

Ever since he’d whiled away summer afternoons fishing for bluegill and crappie in the creek that ran through his parents’ farm, Sam had known how to bait a hook. “Would you not be interested to learn what being among Tosevites is like?” he asked. “If you wore our style of wrappings and false hair, you would look just like everyone else.”

If that wasn’t bait, he didn’t know what was. Poor Kassquit had to be the most isolated individual in the world. Even Mickey and Donald don’t have it so bad, he thought uneasily. They’ve got each other, and she ‘s got nobody. Tempting her hardly seemed fair, but he was a soldier on duty and a human being loyal to his species, while she wasn’t human except by parentage, undoubtedly wished that parentage hadn’t happened, and served the Race with all her heart.

He could tell the hook had gone home, all right. It might well tear out of her mouth, of course; people were a lot more complicated than bluegill. Her face didn’t show much, but then, like Liu Mei’s, her face never showed much. But she leaned forward in her seat and took a couple of deep breaths. If that wasn’t intrigued interest, he had scales and eye turrets himself.

“To look like everyone else?” she said musingly. “I have never imagined such a thing-except in my wishes and dreams, where I look like a proper female of the Race.” Nobody raised by humans would have told a near-stranger anything so intimate; Kassquit didn’t understand the limits behind which people functioned. Then she said something that made Sam sit up and take notice: “If war comes, I may be safer in the not-empire called the United States than here aboard this starship.”

“Do you really think there will be a war between the Reich and the Race?” Jonathan blurted. He hardly seemed better at concealing what he felt than Kassquit did, and what he felt was horrified dismay.

“Who can know?” Kassquit answered. “The Race does not want to fight the Reich, but the Reich has no business making demands on the Race.”

“That is about what our government thinks, too, but we have little influence on what goes on in the Reich,” Sam said.

“Too bad,” Kassquit told him. “For Big Uglies, you seem sensible, you Americans, aside from your absurd custom of snoutcounting.”

“We like it,” Sam said. “It seems to suit us. We are not a people who care to be told what to do by anyone.”

“But what if those who tell you what to do know more about a question than you do?” Kassquit asked. “Does a physician not know more about how to keep you healthy than you can know for yourself?”

“Judging who is an expert in public affairs is harder,” Sam replied. “Many claim to be experts, but they all want to do different things. That makes choosing among them harder. So we let those who convince the largest number of us that they are wise and good govern our not-empire.”

“What if they lie?” Kassquit asked bluntly.

“If we find out, we do not choose them again,” Yeager said. “We choose them for terms of so many years, not for life, and we hope they cannot do too much damage while in office. What if the Race has a very bad Emperor? He is the Emperor for as long as he lives.”

“His ministers will do what is right regardless,” Kassquit said. “And even a bad Emperor’s spirit will watch over the spirits of citizens of the Empire. What good is a bad Tosevite snout-counted official after he is dead? None whatever.”

No sooner had Sam discarded one particular question as impolitic than Jonathan asked it: “How do you know spirits of Emperors past watch over other spirits? Is it not a superstition, the same as our Tosevite superstitions?”