"I have had little opportunity to study them," Valla said. "Could you be more specific?" "Easily," Kainor replied. "And Medart is a classic example, so I will use him. Among his other accomplishments, he was responsible for both the successful human-Irschchan settlement of Ondrian and the end of the Sandeman Incursion in Sector Five, which resulted in Subsector Sandeman's joining the Empire." "Which in turn led to a high percentage of their warriors in the Imperial military or serving as contract police forces on various worlds," Thark said. "Extremely loyal military or police--but they are Elnar's problem. Continue." "Yes, Master. Valla, do you remember anything about either incident?" "Almost nothing," Valla admitted. "Until recently, I had very little interest in Imperial news." "And I would appreciate hearing about both with the information you have that Imperial newscasts probably left out because humans would take it as a given," Thark said. Kainor sighed, something a number of Irschchans had picked up since meeting humans. "Very well. The Ondrian situation, then. During the second year of the joint colony's existence, an Irschchan youngling was exploring in the mountains alone, contrary to all colony rules. He vanished, and search parties found no trace of him. He was presumed dead after a standard week, due to the bitterly cold weather. "It surprised everyone, to put it mildly, when he showed up in excellent health a month after the search was abandoned. That was not all. He had one of the mountain cloudcats with him, and thanks to his Talent--so minimal the Order had not accepted him, but there--he had managed to establish communications with her. Very rudimentary ones, to be sure, but quite adequate to establish their intelligence. "That was a severe blow to the colony. With the cloudcats proven to be intelligent, Imperial law required that the colony be abandoned. However, it is the only place that so-called 'miracle weed' can be grown successfully. It could not be obtained by trading, because the cloudcats have no hands and no interest in farming. Since miracle-weed is the only source of several valuable pharmaceuticals including rapid-heal, the Emperor sent Medart in to see if anything could be salvaged. "He somehow got the idea that the cloudcats originated in a warmer climate than Ondrian's. Nobody believed it, of course; geological studies done when it was first discovered showed Ondrian's climate had never varied enough to produce such an evolutionary difference. And with their lack of hands, they could not possibly have built spaceships to bring them from another planet.