“Very good, sir.” The valet poured whisky over ice. He was from Shalmu, quite humanoid except for bald emerald skin, prehensile tail, one-point-four meter height, and details of ear, hand, and foot. Flandry had bought him some years back, named him Chives, and taught him any number of useful arts. Lately the being had politely refused manumission. (“If I may make so bold as to say it, sir, I am afraid my tribal customs would now have a lack of interest for me matched only by their deplorable lack of propriety.”)
Flandry brooded over his drink a while. “What do you know about Ymir?” he asked.
“Ymir is the arbitrary human name, sir, for the chief planet of a realm—if I may use that word advisedly—coterminous with the Terrestrial Empire, the Merseian, and doubtless a considerable part of the galaxy beyond.”
“Don’t be so bloody literal-minded,” said Flandry. “Especially when I’m being rhetorical. I mean, what do you know about their ways of living, thinking, believing, hoping? What do they find beautiful and what is too horrible to tolerate? Good galloping gods, what do they even use for a government? They call themselves the Dispersal when they talk Anglic—but is that a translation or a mere tag? How can we tell? What do you and I have in common with a being that lives at a hundred below zero, breathing hydrogen at a pressure which makes our ocean beds look like vacuum, drinking liquid methane and using allotropic ice to make his tools?
“We were ready enough to cede Jupiter to them: Jupiter-type planets throughout our realm. They had terrestroid planets to offer in exchange. Why, that swap doubled the volume of our sphere. And we traded a certain amount of scientific information with them, high-pressure physics for low-pressure, oxygen metabolisms versus hydrogen … but disappointingly little, when you get down to it. They’d been in interstellar space longer than we had. (And how did they learn atomics under Ymirite air pressure? Me don’t ask it!) They’d already observed our kind of life throughout … how much of the galaxy? We couldn’t offer them a thing of importance, except the right to colonize some more planets in peace. They’ve never shown as much interest in our wars—the wars of the oxygen breathers on the pygmy planets—as you and I would have in a fight between two ant armies. Why should they care? You could drop Terra or Merseia into Jupiter and it’d hardly make a decent splash. For a hundred years, now, the Ymirites have scarcely said a word to us. Or to Merseia, from all indications. Till now.
“And yet I glanced at the pictures taken out near Vixen, just before we left. And Fenross, may he fry, is right. Those blunt ships were made on a planet similar to Terra, but they have Ymirite lines … the way the first Terran automobiles had the motor in front, because that was where the horse used to be … It could be coincidence, I suppose. Or a red herring. Or—I don’t know. How am I supposed to find out, one man on a planet with ten times the radius of Terra? Judas!” He drained his glass and held it out again.
Chives refilled, then went back to the clothes locker. “A white scarf or a blue?” he mused. “Hm, yes, I do believe the white, sir.”
The flitter plunged onward. Flandry needed a soberjolt by the time he had landed on Ganymede.
There was an established procedure for such a visit. It hadn’t been used for decades, Flandry had had to look it up, but the robot station still waited patiently between rough mountains. He presented his credentials, radio contact was made with the primary planet, unknown messages traveled over its surface. A reply was quick: yes, Captain, the governor can receive you. A spaceship is on its way, and will be at your disposal.
Flandry looked out at the stony desolation of Ganymede. It was not long before a squat, shimmering shape had made grav-beam descent. A tube wormed from its lock to the flitter’s. Flandry sighed. “Let’s go,” he said, and strolled across. Chives trotted after with a burden of weapons, tools, and instruments—none of which were likely to be much use. There was a queasy moment under Ganymede’s natural gravity, then they had entered the Terra-conditioned bubble.