At this point there was a certain amount of noise in the headphones. After a while, Old Rockethead’s voice, suavity gone, came through more or less distinctly: “—and if you don’t start detailing that weapon immediately, you mangy son of a flea-bitten cur, I will have you broken twelve grades below Ordinary Spaceman and strip the skin off your pimply backside with my own boot the moment I get you back on this platform. I’ll personally see to it that you spend all of your leaves cleaning the filthiest latrines the space fleet can find! Now jump to it!”

Major Mardin wiped the line of sweat off his upper lip and began detailing the weapon. Who does he think he’s talking to? his mind asked bitterly. I’m no kid, no apple-cheeked youngster, to be snapped at and dressed down with that line of frowzy, ugly, barracks-corporal humor! I got a standing ovation from the All-Earth Archaeological Society once, and Dr. Emmanuel Hozzne himself congratulated me on my report.

But his mouth began detailing the weapon, his mouth went on articulating the difficult ideas which Ho-Par XV and his fellow deserters had painfully translated into faintly recognizable human terms, his mouth dutifully continued to explicate mathematical and physical concepts into the black speaking cone near his chin.

His mouth went about its business and carried out its orders—but his mind lay agonized at the insult. And then, in a corner of his mind where tenancy was joint, so to speak, a puzzled, warm, highly sensitive and extremely intelligent personality asked a puzzled, tentative question.