“By the milk of Meshe!” said fat Humery beside me. “You want us to go shooting off into the Void? Ugh!” He wheezed, like the high notes of an accordion, in disgust and amusement.
Gaum spoke: “Where is your ship, Mr. Ai?” He put the question softly, half-smiling, as if it were extremely subtle and he wished the subtlety to be noticed. He was a most extraordinarily handsome human being, by any standards and as either sex, and I couldn’t help staring at him as I answered, and also wondered again what the Sarf was. “Why, that’s no secret; it was talked about a good bit on the Karhidish radio. The rocket that landed me on Horden Island is now in the Royal Workshop Foundry in the Artisan School; most of it, anyway; I think various experts went off with various bits of it after they’d examined it.”
“Rocket?” inquired Humery, for I had used the Orgota word for firecracker.
“It succinctly describes the method of propulsion of the landingboat, sir.”
Humery wheezed some more. Gaum merely smiled, saying, “Then you have no means of returning to… well, wherever you came from?”
“Oh, yes. I could speak to Ollul by ansible and ask them to send a NAFAL ship to pick me up. It would get here in seventeen years. Or I could radio to the starship that brought me into your solar system. It’s in orbit around your sun now. It would get here in a matter of days.”
The sensation that caused was visible and audible, and even Gaum couldn’t hide his surprise. There was some discrepancy here. This was the one major fact I had kept concealed in Karhide, even from Estraven. If, as I had been given to understand, the Orgota knew about me only what Karhide had chosen to tell them, then this should have been only one among many surprises. But it wasn’t. It was the big one.
“Where is this ship, sir?” Yegey demanded.
“Orbiting the sun, somewhere between Gethen and Kuhurn.”
“How did you get from it to here?”
“By the firecracker,” said old Humery.
“Precisely. We don’t land an interstellar ship on a populated planet until open communication or alliance is established. So I came in on a little rocket-boat, and landed on Horden Island.”
“And you can get in touch with the—with the big ship by ordinary radio, Mr. Ai?” That was Obsle.
“Yes,” I omitted mention for the present of my little relay satellite, set into orbit from the rocket; I did not want to give them the impression that their sky was full of my junk. “It would take a fairly powerful transmitter, but you have plenty of those.”
“Then we could radio your ship?”
“Yes, if you had the proper signal. The people aboard are in a condition we call stasis, hibernation you might say, so that they won’t lose out of their lives the years they spend waiting for me to get my business done down here. The proper signal on the proper wavelength will set machinery in motion which will bring them out of stasis; after which they’ll consult with me by radio, or by ansible using Ollul as relay-center.”
Someone asked uneasily, “How many of them?”
“Eleven.”
That brought a little sound of relief, a laugh. The tension relaxed a little.
“What if you never signaled?” Obsle asked.
“They’ll come out of stasis automatically, about four years from now.”
“Would they come here after you, then?”
“Not unless they’d heard from me. They’d consult with the Stabiles on Ollul and Ham, by ansible. Most likely they’d decide to try again-send down another person as Envoy. The Second Envoy often finds things easier than the First. He has less explaining to do, and people are likelier to believe him…”
Obsle grinned. Most of the others still looked thoughtful and guarded. Gaum gave me an airy little nod, as if applauding my quickness to reply: a conspirator’s nod. Slose was staring bright-eyed and tense at some inner vision, from which he turned abruptly to me. “Why,” he said, “Mr. Envoy, did you never speak of this other ship, during your two years in Karhide?”
“How do we know that he didn’t?” said Gaum, smiling.