“Just what are the, ah, opposition doing in local waters?” inquired a civilian.
Abrams shrugged. “We don’t know. Kursovikian ships have naturally begun avoiding that area. We could try sending divers, but we’re holding off. You see, Ensign Flandry did more than have an adventure. More, yet, than win a degree of respect and good will among the Tigeries that’ll prove useful to us. He’s gathered information about them we never had before, details that escaped the professional xenologists, and given me the data as tightly organized as a limerick. Above the lot, he delivered a live Seatroll prisoner.”
Hauksberg lit a cheroot. “I gather that’s unusual?”
“Yes, sir, for obvious environmental reasons as well as because the Tigeries normally barbecue any they take.”
Persis d’Io grimaced. “Did you say you like them?” she scolded Flandry.
“Might be hard for a civilized being to understand, Donna,” Abrams drawled. “We prefer nuclear weapons that can barbecue entire planets. Point is, though, our lad here thought up gadgets to keep that Seatroll in health, things a smith and carpenter could make aboard ship. I better not get too specific, but I’ve got hopes about the interrogation.”
“Why not tell us?” Hauksberg asked. “Surely you don’t think anyone here is a Merseian in disguise.”
“Probably not,” Abrams said. “However, you people are bound on to the enemy’s home planet. Diplomatic mission or no, I can’t impose the risk on you of carrying knowledge they’d like to have.”
Hauksberg laughed. “I’ve never been called a blabbermouth more tactfully.”
Persis interrupted. “No arguments, please, darling. I’m too anxious to hear Ensign Flandry.”
“You’re on, son,” Abrams said.
They took loungers. Flandry received a goldleaf-tipped cigaret from Persis’ own fingers. Wine and excitement bubbled in him. He made the tale somewhat better than true: sufficient to drive Abrams into a coughing fit.
“—and so, one day out of Ujanka, we met a ship that could put in a call for us. A flier took me and the prisoner off.”
Persis sighed. “You make it sound such fun. Have you seen your friends again since?”
“Not yet, Donna. I’ve been too busy working with Commander Abrams.” In point of fact, he had done the detail chores of data correlation on a considerably lower level. “I’ve been temporarily assigned to his section. I do have an invitation to visit down in Ujanka, and imagine I’ll be ordered to accept.”
“Right,” Captain Menotti said. “One of our problems has been that, while the Sisterhood accepts our equipment and some of our advice, they’ve remained wary of us. Understandable, when we’re so foreign to them, and when their own Seatroll neighbors were never a real menace. We’ve achieved better liaison with less developed Starkadian cultures. Kursoviki is too proud, too jealous of its privacies, I might say too sophisticated, to take us as seriously as we’d like. Here we may have an entering wedge.”
“And also in your prisoner,” Hauksberg said thoughtfully. “Want to see him.”
“What?” Abrams barked. “Impossible!”
“Why?”
“Why—that is—”
“Wouldn’t fulfill my commission if I didn’t,” Hauksberg said. “I must insist.” He leaned forward. “You see, could be this is a wedge toward somethin’ still more important. Peace.”
‘”How so … my lord?”
“If you pump him as dry’s I imagine you plan, you’ll find out a lot about his culture. They won’t be the faceless enemy, they’ll be real bein’s with real needs and desires. He can accompany an envoy of ours to his people. We can—not unthinkable, y’ know—we can p’rhaps head off this latest local war. Negotiate a peace between the Kursovikians and their neighbors.”
“Or between lions and lambs?” Abrams snapped. “How do you start? They’d never come near any submarine of ours.”
“Go out in native ships, then.”
“We haven’t the men for it. Damn few humans know how to operate a windjammer these days, and sailing on Starkad is a different art anyhow. We should get Kursovikians to take us on a peace mission? Ha!”
“What if their chum here asked ’em? Don’t you think that might be worth a try?”
“Oh!” Persis, who sat beside him, laid a hand over Flandry’s. “If you could—”
Under those eyes, he glowed happily and said he would be delighted. Abrams gave him a bleak look. “If ordered, of course,” he added in a hurry.