With difficulty, Mardin took his eyes away from the transparent un-iced top of the tank. “Sorry, sir,” he mumbled. “I’ll—I’ll try to remember.”

“This the interpreter, Colonel Liu? Major Mardin, eh?” the very tall, stiffly erect man in the jeweled uniform of a Marshal of Space yelled from the railing. “Bring him over. On the double, sir!”

Colonel Liu grabbed Mardin’s left arm and pulled him rapidly across the platform. Rockethead Billingsley cut the colonel’s breathless introduction short. “Major Igor Mardin, is it? Sounds Russian. You wouldn’t be Russian now, would you? I hate Russians.”

Mardin noticed a broad-shouldered vice-marshal standing in Billingsley’s rear stiffen angrily. “No, sir,” he replied. “Mardin is a Croat name. My family is French and Yugoslav with possibly a bit of Arab.”

The Marshal of Space inclined his fur-covered head. “Good! Couldn’t stand you if you were Russian. Hate Russians, hate Chinese, hate Portuguese. Though the Chinese are worst of all, I’d say. Ready to start working on this devil from Jupiter? Come over here, then. And move, man, move!” As he swung around, the dozen or so sapphire-studded Royster pistolettos that swung picturesquely from his shoulder straps clinked and clanked madly, making him seem like a gigantic cat that the mice had belled again and again.

Hurrying after him, Mardin noticed with amusement that the stiff, angry backs were everywhere now. Colonel Liu’s mouth was screwed up into a dark pucker in his face; at the far end of the platform, the young lieutenant who’d escorted him from the jet base was punching a tiny fist into an open palm.