the place, you hardly know anything about it. You may like it.'
She said, looking away across the lights, “No.'
'But why not?'
For a moment she did not answer. Then she turned and looked directly at him, her face a pale blur in the purple night.
'It's your place, your people, not mine. You'll be all right there, but what will they think of me?” She looked away from him again and said in a low voice, “What will you think of me, there among your own people?'
Birrel was so angry that he would not speak for a moment. Then he took hold of her with rough hands and turned her around. He said, “I'm ashamed of you. If you could even think a thing like that—” He resisted a temptation to shake her. He had learned very early in their married life that there was a tone you could not take with Lyllin, and so he made himself speak patiently. “Listen to me! Earth is no more to me than it is to you. It's a name, a place where my grandfather happened to be born. That's all it is. Nearly everybody in space has Earth blood in them, you know that.'
'You have more of it than anything else,” she said.
'Sure,” he said. “My father came from Sirius to take service with Lyra, and my mother's father happened to be an Earthman too. Does all that make me belong to a place I've never seen?'
She looked up at him and he could not clearly see her shadowed face, but he thought that she wanted to be convinced. He was not good with words and the only way he could think of convincing her was to put his arms around her.
She kissed him with a sudden, passionate possessiveness. But he did not think she was yet convinced. It suddenly occurred to him that he did not know much about Earth and could not really be sure how they would regard his Vegan wife there. She had her people's pride, and if they treated her at Earth like an alien, a freak. Birrel was still worrying about that when he went next day to the base. But there, when he went over preliminary flight- plans with Staff, he received fresh cause for anxiety.
Ewer, the plump and usually cheerful Third of Staff, gave him disquieting news on their way to the chartroom.
'Orion's First and Third squadrons have been on the move. And we've lost them.
'What do you mean, lost them?” said Birrel.
'Just what I say. Here, I'll show you.'
They had entered the vast, darkened room that contained a glittering representation of a part of the galaxy. It was only that comparatively small part which human civilization had yet reached, beyond it lay the unpictured, unexplored reaches of stars which no one had yet visited. But even this small section contained thousands of stars and worlds and nebulae all reproduced accurately by projected images of light. They looked like stars caught in spider-webs because of the reference-grid of pale lines that ran through them. Each world had a glowing symbol beside it — a symbol that said it was an E-type human-peopled world, or an E-type with alien life and so not to be bothered, or a non-E-type, or a non-habitable planet, or something else.
Ewer, using a beam-pointer, indicated a region in the extreme east of Orion Sector, nearer to distant Sol than Vega was and not far from the blue line that delimited Lyra space. His beam flicked along a broad, ragged region of dimness, all along the side of which a familiar symbol was repeated.
'A very big radio-emission area across here,” he said.
Birrel nodded understandingly. The symbol was the one for so-called “hot hydrogen” clouds, attenuated atom-scatterings that emitted all up and down the electromagnetic spectrum, fouling up all communications.
'Orion's First and Third went across here…” Ewer's gleaming wand traced a course southeastward, a path that went beyond the symbol-marked dimness. “Our long-range radar watch-stations here and here and here…” The wand touched a dead star, and then the planet of a small sun with the symbol for “no oxygen, no life,” and then another dead star, and Birrel thought of the lonely nature of those watchers’ duty. “…tracked them that far,” Ewer was saying. “But when they got behind that big area of radio-emission, we lost them. Of course they went there deliberately, to evade our watch.'
'Where would you estimate they are now?” Birrel asked.
Ewer shook his head. “I can't hazard a guess on a thing like that. Somewhere in this region.'
The beam he swung cut an area between Vega and distant Sol, that, in this compressed microcosm, seemed choked with stars and stellar debris. A real mess, thought Birrel, and the Fifth would have to go through it. Along one side stretched a perfect cemetery of cosmic cinders, dead suns and drift. Along the other was a parsec-long sprawl of “cool hydrogen” which normally only emitted on the 21-centimeter band. But it was riddled by vast filaments of gaseous matter, the debris of a super-nova of long ago that was moving through it, and, by collision with the atoms of cool hydrogen, would cause terrific radio-emissions.
'They could be anywhere in there, but it would take powerful short-range radar to find them,” said Ewer. And he added, “If they're hiding in there, it's somewhere not too far from your flight-line to Sol.'
'That,” said Birrel irritably, “I'd already figured out.'
'Sorry,” said Ewer.
The First and Third Orion were Solleremos’ crack squadrons. You did not move such forces around idly. Birrel did not like the look of it. When he thought of the transports that would be with the Fifth, and of Lyllin in one of them, he liked it even less.
'Will you have alternative flight-lines set up, and we'll go over them tomorrow?” he asked Ewer.
He went out and told his flitter-pilot to take him to Government House. But he had to wait there for more than an hour before he got to see Ferdias.
Ferdias said promptly, “I know about the First and Third Orion. And I'm sure it's a feint by Solleremos, a threat to keep the Fifth from going to Earth.'
'Suppose it's not a feint,” Birrel said. “They could be waiting to hit the Fifth, and no bluff about it.'
Ferdias nodded. “They could be, but I don't think so.'
'With transports to protect, we'd be in a bad situation if it came to fighting,” said Birrel.
'I realize it, but we have to take a calculated risk.” Ferdias looked impatient. “Do we have to go over this again? I tell you, the UW won't let the Fifth come to Earth at all if it comes stripped down to battle-strength. They weren't too eager there about a whole squadron coming, and this is the only way I could get them to welcome you. Suspicious as they are, still they don't figure you'd bring your wives and children along if you meant trouble.'
This was a new thought to Birrel. “Then they're suspicious of us, at Earth?'
'Of course they are. Karsh reports that Orion's agents have been busy whispering to the UW officials there. They're trying to put it across that I am out to grab Earth. Then Solleremos would have an excuse to step in, to prevent my wicked intentions.'
Birrel liked the sound of it less and less, but there was a point beyond which you did not argue with Ferdias. He got up and looked across the desk at Ferdias and said, “I'll do the best I can for you, on this.'
'I know that, Jay.'
'But I just want to say, you're sending the wrong man to handle a diplomatic tangle.'
Ferdias smiled. “I know men, and I don't think so. Anyway, you'll have Karsh there to steer you.'
And that, Birrel thought dourly as he walked out of the room, was a fine, comforting directive for a man going into a thing like this. The more he heard about this job, the more dubious it seemed. And he was still worried by the way Lyllin felt about it.
To his surprise and relief, when he got home that night he found Lyllin bright and gay and dressed in her finest.
She laughed at his stare. “Some of my people wanted to give us a going-away party. You don't mind?'
Birrel had counted on staying home this night, but he was too relieved by her bright spirits to object. A flitter took them down to Old Town and they walked through the rambling streets and graceful, white walls and arcades and the scattered, drowsy light of the older city. Enormous, white flowers grew between the stories, drenching the night with a sweet fragrance, and the soft, slurred Vegan speech was all around them, with hardly a word of Basic.
They were almost all purebred Vegans in the ancient courtyard-garden where they ate spicy food and drank the sweet, fruit wines. They were a volatile folk, and their talk and laughter echoed off the walls like the chatter of birds. Birrel, watching Lyllin sparkle, almost forgot his worries about the mission. He liked Lyllin's people, they had completely accepted him. After a lifetime spent, first as a child playing around family barracks, as a youngster in
