"She certainly oughtn't to. This makes you Galactic Admiral, no question. I'd thought, of course, of trying you out for Top Gunther, but this settles that. We will support you, sir, wholeheartedly--and my heartfelt thanks for coming here." "I have your permission, then, to give Fao a little discipline when she starts rocking the boat?" "I wish you would, sir. I'm not too easy to get along with, I admit, but I've tried to meet her a lot more than half-way. She's just too damned cocky for _anybody's_ good." "Check. I wish somebody would come along who could knock hell out of Belle." Then, aloud, "Belle, Delcamp and I have the thing going. Do you want in on it?" Delcamp spoke to Fao, and the two women slowly, reluctantly, lowered their shields to match those of the men. "Your Galaxian shaking of the hands--handshake, I mean--is very good," Delcamp said, and he and Garlock shook vigorously. Then the crossed pairs, and lastly the two girls--although neither put much effort into the gesture. "Snap out of it, Belle!" Garlock sent a tight-beamed thought. "She isn't going to bite you!" "She's been trying to, damn her, and I'm going to bite her right back--see if I don't." * * * Garlock called the meeting to order and all four sat down. The Tellurians lighted cigarettes and the others--who, to the Earthlings' surprise, also smoked--assembled and lit two peculiar-looking things half-way between pipe and cigarette. And both pairs of smokers, after a few tentative tests, agreed in not liking at all the other's taste in tobacco. "You know, of course, of the trip we took yesterday?" Garlock asked. "Yes," Delcamp admitted. "We read ComOff Flurnoy. We know of the seventy planets, but nothing of what you found." "Okay. Of the seventy planets, all have Op fields and all have two or more Operators; one planet has forty-four of them. Only sixty-one of the planets, however, have Primes old enough for us to detect. Each of these worlds has two, and only two, Primes--one male and one female--and on each world the two Primes are of approximately the same age. On fifteen of these worlds the Primes are not yet adult. On the forty-six remaining worlds, the Primes are young adults, from pretty much like us four down to considerably younger. None of these couples is married-for-family. None of the girls has as yet had a child or is now pregnant. "Now as to the information circulating all over this planet about us. Part of it is false. Part of it is misleading--to impress the military mind. Thus, the fact is that the _Pleiades_, as far as we know, is the only starship in the whole galaxy. Also, the information is very incomplete, especially as to the all-important fact that we were lost in space for some time before we discovered that the only possible controller of the Gunther Drive is the human mind...." "_What!!!!_" and argument raged until Garlock stopped it by declaring that he would prove it in the Margonians' own ship.