The sight of the puppeteer had jarred loose a whole atticfull of dusty memories. Mixed with data on the puppeteers and their commercial empire, their interactions with humanity, their sudden and shocking disappearance — mixed with these were the taste of Louies first tobacco cigarette, the feel of typewriter keys under clumsy, untrained fingers, lists of Interworld vocabulary to be memorized, the sound and taste of English, the uncertainties and embarrassments of extreme youth. He'd studied the puppeteers during a college history course, then forgotten about them for one hundred and eighty years. Incredible, that a man's mind could retain so much!

"I'll stay in here," he told the puppeteer, "if it makes you more comfortable."

"No. We must meet."

Muscles bunched and twitched beneath its creamy skin as the puppeteer nerved itself. Then the door to the transfer booth clicked open. Louis Wu stepped into the room.

The puppeteer backed away a few paces.

Louis dropped into a chair, more for the puppeteer's comfort than for his own. He would look more harmless sitting down. The chair was of standard make, a self-adjusting masseur chair, strictly for humans. Louis noticed a faint scent now, reminiscent both of a spice shelf and of a chemistry set, more pleasant than othcrwise.

The alien rested on its folded hind leg. "Yon wonder wby I brought you here. This will take some explanation. What do you know of my species?"

"It's been a long time since college. Yon had a comniercial empire once, didn't you? What we like to call known space was just a part of it. We kww the Trinocs bought from you, and we didn't meet the Trinocs until twenty years ago."

"Yes, we dealt with the Trinocs. Largely through robots, as I recall."

"You had a business empire thousands of years old at least, and scores of light years across, at least. And then you left, all of you. You left it all behind. Why?"