She examined my face anxiously, “I hope you mean that, Commander. You see, we’re all very deeply involved in this project. We’re extremely proud of the progress the Third District Finishing Plant has made. We talk about the new developments all the time, everywhere—even in the cafeteria. It didn’t occur to me until too late that you gentlemen might—” she blushed deep, rich red, the way only a blonde can blush “—might take what I said personally. I’m sorry if I—”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” I assured her. “All you did was talk what they call shop. Like when I was in the hospital last month and heard two surgeons discussing how to repair a man’s arm and making it sound as if they were going to nail a new arm on an expensive chair. Real interesting, and I learned a lot.”

I left her looking grateful, which is absolutely the only way to leave a woman, and barged on to Room 1524.

It was evidently used as a classroom when reconverted human junk wasn’t being picked up. A bunch of chairs, a long blackboard, a couple of charts. One of the charts was on the Eoti, the basic information list, that contains all the limited information we have been able to assemble on the bugs in the bloody quarter-century since they came busting in past Pluto to take over the solar system. It hadn’t been changed much since the one I had to memorize in high school: the only difference was a slightly longer section on intelligence and motivation. Just theory, of course, but more carefully thought-out theory than the stuff I’d learned. The big brains had now concluded that the reason all attempts at communicating with them had failed was not because they were a conquest-crazy species, but because they suffered from the same extreme xenophobia as their smaller, less intelligent communal insect cousins here on Earth.