“We’re on our way,” Garuth said. He shook his head wonderingly at Shilohin as they left the Command Deck. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to this.”
“The Earthpeople seem to be adapting well,” she replied. “The last time I talked to Vie Hunt, he was trying to find a way of getting a coupler installed in his office.”
“Earthpeople can adapt to anything,” Garuth said with a sigh.
They entered the room in which the Thuriens had installed a row of four portable percepto-coupling cubicles, which represented the only means of using the Thurien system since the Shapieron was not wired for wsAi~ hence Calazar could not “visit” the ship. Had the ship not been in orbit and therefore in free-fall, the weight of the microtoroid contained in the communications module of the equipment would have buckled the deck at best. Garuth entered one of the cubicles as Shilohin selected another, and he settled back in the recliner to couple his mind into VIsAR. An instant later he was standing alongside Calazar in a large room that was part of an artificial island floating fifty miles above the surface of Queeth. Shilohin appeared next to him a few seconds later.
“Terrans are shrewder than you give them credit for,” Garuth stated after the three of them had been talking for some time. “We lived among them for six months, and we know. What is difficult for the Ganymean mind to grasp is that deception and the recognition of deception are parts of their way of life. They have a natural feel for it and wifi soon get to the truth. Trying to conceal it any longer will only make the situation more embarrassing for all of us when they do. You should be frank with them now.”
“And besides, this is not the Ganymean way,” Shilohin said. “We have told you the true situation on Earth and how we were made welcome and helped there in every way possible. Your earlier doubts were justified because of the lies reported to you by the Jevienese, but that no longer holds. You owe it to the Terrans, and to us, to tell them the whole truth now.”
Calazar moved away a short distance and turned to stand with his hands clasped behind his back while he considered what they had said. The room they were in formed an oval projection hanging from the underside of the island. Its interior comprised a sunken floor surrounded by a continuous, sloping transparent wall that looked down over the purple, cloud-flecked surface of Queeth in every direction. Outside the wall and above, the mass of the island loomed in a series of metallic contours, blisters, and prominences converging together as they curved away out of sight overhead. “So . . . we won’t be able to keep the truth from them,” Calazar said at last without turning his head.
“Remember it was the Terrans who first recognized the risk that the Jevlenese could have planned to destroy the Shapieron with Earth set up to take the blame,” Garuth reminded him. “The Thuriens would never have thought of it. Let’s be honest-Terran and Jevienese minds think very much alike, and Ganymean minds think very differently. We are not predators, and we have not evolved the art of sensing predators.”
“And for the same reason you might well find you need the Terrans to help get to the bottom of exactly what the Jevlenese are up to,” Shilohin added. “Are you any nearer to finding out why they have been systematically falsifying their reports of Earth for years?”
Calazar turned from the viewing wall and faced them again. “No,” he admitted.
“Years,” Garuth repeated pointedly. “And you suspected noth
ing until you began receiving the communications from Parside.” Calazar thought for a while, then sighed and nodded in resignation. “You are right-we suspected nothing. Until recently we believed the Jevlenese had integrated well into our society as enthusiastic students of our science and culture. We saw them as cocitizens who would spread outward with us to other worlds. . . .” He gestured behind him and downward. “This one, for example. We even helped them to establish their own autonomously administered and completely self-governed planet as the cradle of a new civilization that would cross the Galaxy in partnership with our own.”