“We are seeking to make colonization more effective, and to spread safely over broader areas of Tosev 3,” Faparz replied. “Your insights into this process will be valuable, and most appreciated.”

“I shall of course do whatever I can to aid this worthy effort,” Felless said. “One thing that occurs to me is using animals native to Home to make portions of Tosev 3 more Homelike. This is, I gather, already beginning to occur informally; systematizing it could yield good results.”

“I agree,” Faparz said. “This notion has already been proposed, and is likely to be implemented.” Felless hid her disappointment. But Reffet’s adjutant went on, “That is the sort of idea we are seeking. That you can find such a scheme on the spur of the moment shows you are likely to be valuable to the project.”

“Spirits of Emperors past look kindly on you for your praise!” Felless exclaimed. Then her own spirits grew gloomy, almost as if ginger were ebbing from her system. “But I must tell you, Fleetlord’s Adjutant, that removing me from the Reich may prove difficult. Ambassador Veffani has… formed a grudge against me, and desires that I stay here to work among Big Uglies.”

“I am aware of the nature of this, ah, grudge,” Faparz said primly, and Felless’ spirits tumbled down into her toeclaws. Then Reffet’s aide continued, “Still, I believe we may accommodate the ambassador while still involving you. Some of this research is being conducted at a consular site that, while within the boundaries of the Reich, is relatively close to territory the Race rules, and the climate there is certainly more salubrious than in this miserable, cold, dank, misty place.”

“If you are offering me a new assignment, superior sir, I gladly accept.” Felless had to swallow an emphatic cough that would have shown how glad she really was. Now she felt almost as if she’d had the taste of ginger she’d forgone waiting for Faparz. Wherever he-and Reffet-sent her, it couldn’t possibly be worse than Nuremberg. Of that she had not a doubt in the world, not a doubt in the whole wide Empire.

Lieutenant Colonel Johannes Drucker floated weightless in Kathe, the reusable upper stage of the A-45 that had blasted him into orbit from Peenemunde. He was glad to be a couple of hundred kilometers above the weather, even more glad than usual: fogs rolling in off the Baltic had twice delayed his launch. Here in space, he still felt like a man serving his country. Down on the ground, he had trouble feeling like anything but a man his country was trying to get.

Gently, he patted the instrument panel. A lot of fliers named their upper stages for wives or girlfriends. How many, though, named them for wives or girlfriends who were, or might be, a quarter part Jew? Well, no one had tried making him change the name. That was something, a small something. Since the SS had had to give Kathe back to him, perhaps the official thinking was that she couldn’t really have had any Jewish blood at all. Or perhaps the powers that be simply hadn’t noticed till now, and a technician with a can of paint would be waiting when Drucker came down.

He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about anything of the sort. Instead, he looked outward. Somewhere out there, in the asteroid belt past the orbit of Mars, the Americans aboard the Lewis and Clark were doing… what? Drucker didn’t know. Neither did anyone else in the Greater German Reich.

What he did know was that he was enormously jealous of the Americans. They’d gone out there in a real spacecraft, not just an overgrown Roman candle like the one he’d ridden into orbit. “We should have done that,” he muttered. Germany had been ahead of the USA in rocketry during the fighting against the Lizards; it struck him as unconscionable that the Reich ’s lead had been frittered away.

His gaze grew hungry, as hungry as those of the wolves that had once prowled around Peenemunde. The Americans had taken a long step toward building a real starship. If the Reich had such ships, the Lizards would be shaking in the boots they didn’t wear. If the Reich had starships, they would be vengeance weapons, and the Race had to know it.

The radio crackled to life: “Spaceship of the Deutsche, acknowledge this transmission at once!”

It was, of course, a Lizard talking. No human being would have been so arrogant. No human nation could have afforded to be so arrogant to the Greater German Reich. But the Race could. However strong the Reich was, the Race was stronger. Every trip into space rubbed Drucker’s nose in that unpalatable fact.

“Acknowledging,” he said, shortly, using the language of the Race himself. Some of the Lizards with whom he dealt were decent enough sorts; with them, he went through the polite I greet you s. To the ones who only snapped at him, he snapped in return.

“Your orbit is acceptable,” the Lizard told him. The Lizard would have been not just arrogant but furious had his orbit been anything else.

“You so relieve my mind,” Drucker responded. That was sarcasm and truth commingled. Weapons were tracking him now. They would have been ready to go after Kathe had an unannounced orbital change made the Race nervous.

“See that you stay where you ought to be,” the Lizard said. “Out.”

Drucker chuckled. “Not even a chance to get the last word.” He chuckled again. “Probably a female of the Race.” The real Kathe, had she heard that slur on womankind, would have snorted and stuck an elbow in his ribs. He probably would have deserved it, too.

He glanced down at Earth below. He was sweeping along above the western Pacific; a nasty storm was building there, with outlying tendrils of cloud already stretching out over Japan and reaching toward China. The Reich, the Americans, and the Race all sold meteorological photos to countries without satellites of their own. Back when Drucker was a child, people had been at the mercy of the weather. They still were, but to a lesser degree. They couldn’t change it, but at least they had some idea of what was on the way. That made a difference.

Down toward the equator Kathe flew at better than 27,000 kilometers an hour. The velocity sounded enormous, but wasn’t enough to escape Earth orbit, let alone travel from star to star. That bothered Drucker more than usual. He wanted to go out farther into the solar system, wanted to and couldn’t. Some German spacecraft had gone to Mars, but he hadn’t been aboard any of them. And they were only rockets, hardly more potent than the A-45 that had lifted him into orbit.

“Calling the German spacecraft! Calling the German spacecraft!” Another peremptory signal, but this one in German, and one he was glad to answer.

“Kathe here, with Drucker aboard,” he said. “How goes it, Hermann Goring?”

“Well enough,” the radio operator aboard the German space station replied. “And with you?”

“Not too bad,” Drucker said. “And when do you take off and start rampaging through outer space?”

“Would day after tomorrow suit you?” The radioman laughed. So did Drucker. Up above them, some Lizard listening to their transmission would probably have started tearing out his hair, if only he’d had any to tear.

“Day after tomorrow wouldn’t suit me at all,” Drucker said, “because then I couldn’t be aboard when you left. And I want to go traveling.”

“I don’t blame you,” the radio operator said. “The frontier is out this way. If the Americans are going to explore it, we had better do the same.”

“Not just the Americans,” Drucker said, and said no more. The Lizards already knew the Reich mistrusted them. For that matter, the mistrust ran both ways, no doubt with good reason.

Drucker wondered just how soon the Hermann Goring really would be leaving Earth orbit for something more worthwhile. Sooner than it would have if the Americans hadn’t lit a fire under the Reich ’s space program-he was sure of that. He was also sure the Race would be horrified to have not one but two Earthly nations on the way toward genuine spacecraft.