“Yes, that is my father,” Jonathan Yeager said with what sounded like pardonable pride.

“He does good work,” Drucker said. “He is the only Tosevite who ever made me believe he could think like a male of the Race. Why are you here instead of him?”

“He has been here,” the younger Yeager answered. “I first came here with him, as his assistant-I still wear the body paint of an assistant psychological researcher. But I am… better suited to the research for this part of the project than he is.”

“Can you tell me why?” Drucker asked. Jonathan Yeager shook his head. Seeing that gesture instead of one from a scaly hand made Drucker feel at home, even though the American had told him no.

Yeager said, “I am told you will be able to go home soon.”

“Yes, if I have any home left,” Drucker answered. “I do not know whether my kin are alive or dead.”

“I hope they are well,” Jonathan Yeager said. “I look forward to going home myself. I have been up here since the war began. The Race judged it was not safe for me to leave.”

“I would say that was likely to be true,” Drucker agreed. “We fought hard.”

“I know,” Yeager said. “But did you really think you could win?”

“Did I think so?” Drucker shook his head. “I did not think we had a chance. But what could I do? When your leaders tell you to go to war, you go to war. They must have thought we could win, or they would not have started fighting.”

“They were-” Jonathan Yeager broke off, shaking his head.

He’d been about to say something like, They were pretty stupid if they did. Drucker would have argued with him if he hadn’t felt the same way. The crisis had started while Himmler was Fuhrer, and Kaltenbrunner hadn’t done anything to make it go away.