The animal was sitting on the seat now, hunkered down out of the keening wind that had sprung up.

Terl untied the rope and Jonnie stood up.

“What's that all about?” said Terl, pointing at the chopped-up trees.

“Firewood,” said Jonnie. “Now that I’m untied I will carry some into the cage.”

“Firewood?”

“Let's say I’m tired of a diet of raw rat, my friend.”

That night, having eaten his first cooked food in months and thawing the winter chill from his bones before the pleasant fire on the cage floor, Jonnie heaved a sigh of relief.

The new clothes were hung up on sticks to dry. He sat cross-legged, digging into his pouch.

He drew out the gold metal disc and then he reached for the gold belt buckle he had just acquired. He studied them.

The bird with the arrows was essentially the same on each one. And now he could read the squiggles.

The disc said, "The United States of America."

The belt buckle said, "The United States Air Force”

So his people long ago had been a nation. And it had had a force of some sort devoted to the air.

The Psychlos wore belt buckles that said they were members of the Intergalactic Mining Company.

With a smile that would have frightened Terl had he seen it, Jonnie supposed that he was as of this minute a member, the only member, of the United States Air Force.

He put the buckle carefully under a piece of robe he used for a pillow and lay for a long time looking at the dancing flames.

The mighty planet Psychlo, “king of the galaxies,” basked beneath the forceful rays of triple suns.

The courier stood to the side of Intergalactic’s transshipment receipt area, waiting. Above him the mauve skies domed the purple hillsides of the horizon. All about him spread the smoke-spewing factories, the power lines, the tense and crackling might of the company. Machines and vehicles boiled in purposeful turmoil throughout the multilayered roads and plains of the vast compound. In the distance lay the pyramidal shapes of the Imperial City. Spotted among the outlying hills were the compounds of many other companies– factories that spewed out their products to whole galaxies.

Who would be elsewhere? thought the courier. He sat astride his small ground-go, momentarily idle in his daily rounds, waiting. Who would want to live and toil on some forgotten light– gravity planet, wearing a mask, working under domes, driving pressurized vehicles, digging in alien soil? Or, drafted, fighting some war on territory nobody cared about anyway? Not this Psychlo, that was for sure.

A shrieking whistle pierced the day: the warning signal to get clear of the transshipment receipt platform, chasing away a fleet of blade, brush, and vacuum vehicles that had been clearing it.

The courier automatically checked his own proximity. Good, he was outside the danger area.

The network of lines and cables about the platform hummed. Then they shrieked into a crescendo that ended with a roaring explosion.

Tons of ore materialized on the platform surface, teleported in an instant across the galaxies.

The courier gazed through the momentarily ionized air. Look at that. The incoming ore had a crust of whitish substance overlying it. The courier had seen it before from time to time. Somebody said it was called “snow.” Trickles of water took the place of the flakes. Imagine having to work and live on a crazy planet like that.

The all-clear signal sounded and the courier gunned his ground-go forward to the new ore heap. The receipt foreman rumbled out to the new pile of ore.

“Look at that,” said the courier.

“Snow.”

The receipt foreman had seen it all, knew it all, and held junior couriers in contempt. “It’s bauxite, not snow.”

“It had some snow on it when it landed.”

The receipt foreman scrambled over to the right side of the pile and fished around. He brought up a small dispatch box. Standing on the ore, he noted the box number on his clipboard and then brought it over to the courier.

Blade vehicles were charging in on the new pile. The receipt foreman impatiently handed the clipboard to the courier, who signed. The box was thrown at him. He threw back the clipboard and it caught the receipt foreman on his massive chest.

The courier gunned his ground-go and swiftly threaded his way through the incoming machines, speeding toward the Intergalactic Central Administration Compound.

A few minutes later a clerk, carrying the box, walked into the office of Zafin, Junior Assistant to the Deputy Director for Secondary Uninhabited Planets. The office was little more than a cubicle, for space at Intergalactic Central housed three hundred thousand administrative personnel.

Zafin was a young ambitious executive. “What's that box doing wet?” he said.

The clerk, who was about to set it down among papers, hastily withdrew it, got out a cloth, and dried it. He looked at the label. “It’s from Earth; must be raining there.”

“Typical,” said Zafin. "Where's that?”

The clerk tactfully hit a projector button and a chart flared on the wall. The clerk shifted the focus, peered, and then put a claw on a small dot.

Zafin wasn't bothering to look. He had opened the dispatch box and was sorting the dispatches to different departments under him, zipping an initial on those that required it. He was almost finished when he held up a dispatch that required some work and couldn't just be initialed. He looked at it with distaste.

“Green flashed urgent,” said Zafin. The clerk took it apologetically and read it. It s just a request for information.”

“Too high a priority,” said Zafin. He took it back. “Here we have three wars in progress and somebody from...where?"

“Earth,” said the clerk.

“Who sent it?”

The clerk took the dispatch back and looked. “A security chief named...named Terl."

“What's his record?”

The clerk put his talons on a button console and a wall slot clattered and then spat out a folder. The clerk handed it over.

“Terl,” said Zafin. He frowned, thinking. “Haven't I heard that name before?”

The clerk took back the folder and looked at it. “He requested a transfer about five months ago our time.”

“Steel trap brain,” said Zafin. “That's me.” And he meant it. He took the folder back. “Never forget a name.” He leafed through the papers. “Must be a dead, dull place, Earth. And now a dispatch with wrong priority.”

The clerk took the folder back.

Zafin frowned. “Well, where's the dispatch?”

“On your desk, Your Honor.”

Zafin looked at it. “He wants to know what connections...Numph? Numph?"

The clerk worked the console and a screen flashed. "Intergalactic Director, Earth.”

“This Terl wants to know what connections he has in the main office,” said Zafin.

The clerk pushed some more buttons. The screen flashed. The clerk said, “He's the uncle of Nipe, Assistant Director of Accounting for Secondary Planets.”

“Well, write it on the dispatch and send it back.”

It's also marked confidential,” said the clerk.

“Well, mark it confidential,” said Zafin. He sat back, thinking. He turned his chair and looked out the window at the distant city. The breeze was cool and pleasant. It dissipated some of his irritation.

Zafin turned back to his desk. “Well, we won't discipline this what's-his-name...”

"Terl," said the clerk.

"Terl," said Zafin. “Just put it in his record that he assigns too high priorities to nonsense. He's simply young and ambitious and doesn't know much about being an executive. We don't need a lot of excess and incorrect administration around here! You understand that?”

The clerk said that he did and backed out with the box and its contents. He wrote into Terl's record, “Assigns too high priorities to nonsense; young, ambitious, and unskilled as an executive. Ignore further communications.”