Let’s ask. Can’t lose much.
Abrams thumbed a button on his vidiphone. An operator looked out of the screen. “Get me the greenskin cine,” Abrams ordered.
“Yes, sir. If possible.”
“Better be possible. What’re you paid for? Tell his cohorts all gleaming in purple and gold to tell him I’m about to make my next move.”
“What, sir?” The operator was new here.
“You heard me, son. Snarch!”
Time must pass while the word seeped through channels. Abrams opened a drawer, got out his magnetic chessboard, and pondered. He hadn’t actually been ready to play. However, Runei the Wanderer was too fascinated by their match to refuse an offer if he had a spare moment lying around; and damn if any Merseian son of a mother was going to win at a Terran game.
Hm … promising development here, with the white bishop … no, wait, then the queen might come under attack … tempting to sic a computer onto the problem … betcha the opposition did … maybe not … ah, so.
“Commandant Runei, sir.”
An image jumped to view. Abrams could spot individual differences between nonhumans as easily as with his own species. That was part of his business. An untrained eye saw merely the alienness. Not that the Merseians were so odd, compared to some. Runei was a true mammal from a terrestroid planet. He showed reptile ancestry a little more than Homo Sapiens does, in hairless pale-green skin, faintly scaled, and short triangular spines running from the top of his head, down his back to the end of a long heavy tail. That tail counterbalanced a forward-leaning posture, and he sat on the tripod which it made with his legs. But otherwise he rather resembled a tall, broad man. Except for complex bony convolutions in place of external ears, and brow ridges over-hanging the jet eyes, his head and face might almost have been Terran. He wore the form-fitting black and silver uniform of his service. Behind him could be seen on the wall a bell-mouthed gun, a ship model, a curious statuette: souvenirs of far stars.
“Greeting, Commander.” He spoke fluent Anglic, with a musical accent. “You work late.”
“And you’ve dragged yourself off the rack early,” Abrams grunted. “Must be about sunrise where you are.”
Runei’s glance flickered toward a chrono. “Yes, I believe so. But we pay scant attention here.”
“You can ignore the sun easier’n us, all right, squatted down in the ooze. But your native friends still live by this cheap two-thirds day they got. Don’t you keep office hours for them?”
Abrams’ mind ranged across the planet, to the enemy base. Starkad was a big world, whose gravity and atmosphere gnawed land masses away between tectonic epochs. Thus, a world of shallow ocean, made turbulent by wind and the moons; a world of many islands large and small, but no real continents. The Merseians had established themselves in the region they called the Kimraig Sea. They had spread their dromes widely across the surface, their bubblehouses over the bottom. And their aircraft ruled those skies. Not often did a recon flight, robot or piloted, come back to Highport with word of what was going on. Nor did instruments peering from spaceships as they came and went show much.
One of these years, Abrams thought, somebody will break the tacit agreement and put up a few spy satellites. Why not us?—’Course, then the other side’ll bring space warships, instead of just transports, and go potshooting. And then the first side will bring bigger warships.
“I am glad you called,” Runei said. “I have thanked Admiral Enriques for the conversion unit, but pleasure is to express obligation to a friend.”
“Huh?”
“You did not know? One of our main desalinators broke down. Your commandant was good enough to furnish us with a replacement part we lacked.”
“Oh, yeh. That.” Abrams rolled his cigar between his teeth.
The matter was ridiculous, he thought. Terrans and Merseians were at war on Starkad. They killed each other’s people. But nonetheless, Runei had sent a message of congratulations when Birthday rolled around. (Twice ridiculous! Even if a spaceship in hyperdrive has no theoretical limit to her pseudovelocity, the concept of simultaneity remains meaningless over interstellar distances.) And Enriques had now saved Runei from depleting his beer supplies.