He stirred, tossed off his drink, and added, “Besides, you claim the Gospodar of Dennitza is our latest problem child. But you’ve also said you were working Sector Arcturus: almost diametrically opposite, and well inside those vaguenesses we are pleased to call the borders of the Empire. Tell me, then—you’ve been almighty unspecific about your operations, and I supposed that was because you were under security, and didn’t pry—tell me, as far as you’re allowed, what does the space around Arcturus have to do with Dennitza? With anything in the Taurian Sector?”

“I stayed mum because I didn’t want to spoil this occasion,” Hazeltine said. “From what Mother told me, I expected fun, when I could get a leave long enough to justify the trip to join you; but you’ve opened whole universes to me that I never guessed existed.” He flushed. “If I ever gave any thought to such things, I self-righteously labeled them Vice.’”

“Which they are,” Flandry put in. “What you bucolic types don’t realize is that worthwhile vice doesn’t mean lolling around on cushions eating drugged custard. How dismal! I’d rather be virtuous. Decadence requires application. But go on.”

“We’ll land now, and I’ll report back,” Hazeltine said. “I don’t know where they’ll send me next, and doubtless won’t be free to tell you. While the chance remains, I’ll be honest. I came here wanting to know you as a man, but also wanting to, oh, alert you if nothing else, because I think your brains will be sorely needed, and it’s damn hard to communicate through channels.”

Indeed, Flandry admitted.

His gaze went to the stars in the viewscreeen. Without amplification, few that he could see lay in the more or less 200-light-year radius of that rough and blurry-edged spheroid named the Terran Empire. Those were giants, visible by virtue of shining across distances we can traverse, under hyperdrive, but will never truly comprehend; and they filled the merest, tiniest fragment of the galaxy, far out in a spiral arm where their numbers were beginning to thin toward cosmic hollowness.