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Atvar, the commander of the Race’s conquest fleet, poked a control with a fingerclaw A holographic i above the projector in the fleetlord’s office In the forty years since the conquest fleet carown all too intie

So had Kirel, shiplord of the 127th Emperor Hetto, the bannership of the conquest fleet The body paint on his scaly, green-brown hide was more ornate than every other male’s save only Atvar’s His reat ave his laughter a sardonic twist

“Once hty Tosevite warrior, eh, Exalted Fleetlord?” he said He ended the sentence with an interrogative cough

“Even so, Shiplord,” Atvar answered “Even so He does not look as if he would cause us much trouble, does he?”

“By the Emperor, no,” Kirel said Both Atvar and he swiveled their turreted eyes so they looked down at the ground for a n back on distant Home

As Atvar had done so ram to view it from all sides The Tosevite male was mounted on a hairy local quadruped He wore a tunic of rather rusty chain arht cloth coat A pointed iron helrew like dry grass on his scaleless, pinkish cheeks and jaw For armament, he had a spear, a sword, a knife, and a shield with a cross painted in red on it

A long, hissing sigh escaped Atvar “If only it had been as easy as we thought it would be”

“Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said “Who would have thought the Big Uglies”-the nicknahbors-“could have changed so much in a mere sixteen hundred years?”

“No one,” Atvar said “No one at all” He used a different cough this ti it They deserved emphasis The Race-and the Hallessi and Rabotevs, whose planets the Eed only very slowly, only very cautiously For the Race, onea probe to Tosev 3, everyone back on Home had blithely assued much by the time the conquest fleet arrived

Never in its hundred thousand years of unified imperial history-and never in the chaotic tier and more unpleasant surprise When the conquest fleet did reach Tosev 3, it found not sword-swinging savages but a highly industrialized world with several e one another for dominance

“Even after all these years, there are tie that we did not completely conquer this planet,” Atvar said “But, on the other fork of the tongue, there are also ti but relief that we still maintain control over any part of its surface”

“I understand, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said

“I know you do, Shiplord I alad you do,” Atvar said “But I do wonder if anyone back on Home truly understands I have the dubious distinction of co the first interstellar conquest fleet in the history of the Race that did not conquer cos to remember me”

“Conditions here were not as we anticipated them,” Kirel said loyally He’d had his chances to be disloyal, had the to believe he wouldn’t He went on, “Do you not agree that there is a certain amount of irony in the profit we have e and others froraphs because they have none of their own from what seems to them to be a distant and uncivilized time”

“Irony? Yes, that is one of the words I ht apply to the situation-one of the politer words,” Atvar said He went back to his desk and prodded the control again The Tosevite warrior vanished He wished he could make all the Tosevites vanish that easily, but no such luck He replaced the warrior’s ie with a map of the surface of Tosev 3

By his standards, it was a chilly world, with too h land Of what land there was, the Race did not rule enough Only the southern half of the lesser continental mass, the southwest and south of the main continental mass, and the island continent to the southeast of the ly red on the map The not-empires of the Americans, the Russkis, and the Deutsche all remained independent, and needed colors of their own So did the island eh both of them were shrunken remnants of what they had been when the conquest fleet came to Tosev 3

Kirel also turned one eye toward thethe other on Atvar “Truly, Exalted Fleetlord, it could be worse”

“So it could,” Atvar said with another sigh “But it could also be a great deal better It would be a great deal better if these areas here on the eastern part of the main continental ed our rule as they should”

“I have long since concluded that the Big Uglies never do things as they should,” Kirel said

“I agree completely,” the fleetlord replied His little tailstuitation “But how are we to convince the fleetlord of the colonization fleet that this is the case?”

Now Kirel sighed “I do not know He lacks our experience with this world Once he acquires it, he will, I a But we id for a time”

Back on Hoid was a term of praise It had been a term of praise when the conquest fleet came to Tosev 3, too No id stood not a chance of understanding the Big Uglies By the standards of Home, the rown dreadfully flighty

Males… Atvar said, “It will be good to have feue once more When they come into season and I s about this accursed world for a while I look forward to having the excuse, you understand, not to the breeding itself”

“Of course, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said prily,

to have such matters always on your mind”

“I should hope not!” Atvar exclaimed Like any other member of the Race, he viewed Tosevite sexuality with a sort of horrified fascination Intellectually, he grasped how the Big Uglies’ year-round interest incolored every aspect of their behavior But he had no feel for the subtleties, or indeed for what the Big Uglies no doubt viewed as broad strokes Despite intensive research, few males of the Race did, any more than the Tosevites could understand the Race’s dispassionate view of such matters

Pshing, Atvar’s adjutant, came into the chamber One side of his body was painted in a pattern that matched the fleetlord’s; the other showed his own, far lower, rank He bent his forward-sloping torso into the posture of respect and waited to be noticed

“Speak,” Atvar said “Give forth”

“I thank you, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said “I beg leave to report that the lead ships of the colonization fleet have passed within the orbit of Tosev 4, the planet the Big Uglies call Mars Very soon now, those ships will seek to circle and land on this world”

“I am aware of this, yes” Atvar’s voice was even drier than the desert surrounding the riverside city-Cairo, the local nauished colleague in the colonization fleet aware that the Tosevites, for all their protestations of peaceful intent, may seek to harm his ships when they do reach Tosev 3?”

“Fleetlord Reffet continues to assurereplied “He was quite taken aback to receive radio transmissions from the various Tosevite not-empires”

“He should not have been,” Atvar said “We have been warning hi capacities”