I still felt uncomfortable about Hacker, though. He had tasted blood on Rayna and the effect of that on him had been unusually bad; he had acquired a reckless attitude toward the rights of intelligent life, his own included. * * * * * As if to prove me wrong, he drove very carefully over the special road the Newtaneans had laid out overnight from our landing area to the highway a mile or so away. The three carloads of scowling plenipotentiaries up ahead looked appealingly funny. While the Newtaneans were remarkably, even handsomely, like us (except for a certain closeness of the eyes and a reversed ordering of their fingers) their facial muscles carried different emotional convictions. On our landing ten hours before those officials had thought our smiling faces indicated angry aggressiveness and we had been equally uncertain about their intentions. But their Semanticizer had eventually made the true state of affairs clear. Evolution had determined that an upward set of Newtanean facial muscles meant a bad situation, a downward set pleasure and cordiality. The more they scowled the more we smiled and everybody was very happy about the potential flowering of transgalactic culture that we were instituting. When we turned onto the magnificent superhighway, however, Hacker became furious. He kept trying to pull over to the right but a steady stream of scarab-shaped cars, filled with curious sightseers, kept getting in his way. "This is crazy," he cried. "I think they drive on the left here," Dr. Barnes tried to explain. "That's what I mean--they're crazy!" "They did it that way in England for centuries," I said. "It took a long time to get them to change." "Fine, fine." Suddenly he laughed, as if pleased with his capacity for tolerance. "If it's good enough for them it's good enough for us visitors. They sure know how to build beautiful roads!" I suppose I should have been pleased with this shift toward good humor but I wasn't. I just could not like the youngster. He had been forgivably cocky for his age before, but now something nasty had been added. Still, he remained on his best behavior as we approached Crona, the capital city. Its golden towers gleamed in the sun and everywhere there were crowds of beautiful tan people, waving to us and happily scowling their welcome. The lead cars stopped before a particularly elegant skyscraper that was set in the middle of vast, symmetrical gardens. We got out and were greeted by dignitaries accompanied by technicians with Semanticizing equipment. (If this equipment worked slowly, it was still faster than any we'd developed.) The men who came toward us were puzzled when we extended our hands but, once the translation came through and they understood it was an Earth custom, they copied our gesture. Only they all put out their left hands. It took a while before reasonable contact could be made. "Interesting," said Dr. Barnes. "They all seem to be left-handed."