A gala crowd filled the newly decorated ballroom. Sloonge, impeccable in a tent-sized canary-yellow outfit on which the Order of the Purple Kidney-newly awarded for services to the Fatherland-sparkled, waved genially at the Terran Mission as they were announced.

"Ah, there, Mr. Amba.s.sador," he called, hurrying forward to offer impromptu hands to all members of the delegation simultaneously. "You're looking quite your old self again after your ordeal."

"Ordeal? What ordeal?" Wrothwax boomed, deftly lifting a gla.s.s from a pa.s.sing tray. "Nonsense, my boy. I had a capital time exploring the palace catacombs." He snared a slab of pate from another tray. "I must confess I did get a trifle weary of maraschino cherries; had no rations but my emergency c.o.c.ktail kit, you understand."

"Oh? I had an idea you might have been, er, lost."

"Nothing in it, Sloonge. Jolly interesting place, the catacombs. I was just on the point of deciphering a number of fascinating inscriptions when the earthquake occurred."

"You wouldn't have been snooping just a tiny bit?" Sloonge inquired archly, wagging a limp, cuc.u.mber-sized finger at the Terran envoy.

"Scholary research, my boy, nothing more," Wrothwax rea.s.sured his host, signaling for a refill. "Pity to abandon my finds, but I felt I should rush back and see to the safety of my staff."

"In this case," Magnan murmured, "I'm sure excretion was the better part of valor."

"Eh?" Wrothwax said. "For a moment I thought you said-but never mind. Slip of the tongue, eh?"

"No doubt."

"Quite. Pity I never got to meet His Supremacy, Sloonge-but I'm sure you and I can come to an agreement regarding the extensive deposits of pure corundum-rubies and emeralds to you, gentlemen-among which I found myself after the avalanche. Now, I had in mind a barter arrangement under which Corps bottoms haul in Groaci sand, for which you say you have a need, and take away these troublesome gems-waste products, I believe you called them...?" The Amba.s.sador and the Minister strolled off, deep in negotiation.

"Hmmmph," Magnan commented. "Never a word of grat.i.tude to me for arranging his evacuation from the danger zone."

"Still, for once a Terry Amba.s.sador got inside the problem," Retief said.

"And as a result of my efforts-with your a.s.sistance, of course. Retief-emerged covered with, if not glory, rubies and emeralds."

"And smelling like a rose," Retief agreed.

The Piecemakers

1.

"Gentlemen," Undersecretary for Extraterrestrial Affairs Thunderstroke announced in tones of doom, "it looks like war."

"Eh, what's that?" a stout man in plainly tailored civvies spoke up blurrily, as one just awakened from a pleasant nap. "War, you say?" He slapped the conference table with a well-manicured hand. "Well, it's about time we taught the beggars a lesson!"

"You've leaped to a faulty conclusion. Colonel," the Undersecretary said sourly. "We are not on the point of embarking on hostilities-"

"Naturally not," the Military Adviser said, rising. "Not your job. Civilians all very well, but time now for military to take over. You'll excuse me, Mr. Secretary, I must rejoin my regiment at once-"

"Sit down, Henry," the Chief of the Groaci Desk said tiredly. "You haven't got the big picture. No Terran Forces are involved on Yudore at all. Strictly an Eetee affair."

"Sound thinking." The Colonel nodded approvingly. "Why throw away the lives of Terran lads when there are plenty of native lives available for the purpose? To be given selflessly in defense of sacred Terran principles, that is to say. By the way, which is our side?"

"Try to grasp the point, Colonel," the Undersecretary said acidly. "We're neutral in the affair."

"Of course, but whom are we neutral in favor of? Or in favor of whom, I should say, are we-"

"No one! And we intend to keep it that way!"

"Umm." The Colonel resumed his seat and his nap.

"It appears," the Undersecretary resumed, "that our old friends the Groaci are locked in an eyestalk-to-eyestalk confrontation with the Slox."

"What are these shlocks called, sir?" the Acting a.s.sistant Deputy Undersecretary inquired in a tone of deep synthetic interest.

"Slox, Magnan, S-L-O-X. Inveterate troublemakers from the Slox System, half a dozen lights in-Arm. It appears both they and the Groaci are claiming mandateship of Yudore, an unexceptional planet of a small Cla.s.s G sun well off the trade routes."

"Well, why doesn't one of them just go mandate somewhere else?" a Commerce man demanded. "There are scads of available planets out that way."

"The Groaci state that Yudore falls within their natural sphere of influence," Thunderstroke said. "As for the Slox, their position is that they found the place first."

"They could flip a coin for it," the Commerce man snapped. "Then we could all get back to matters of importance, such as the abnormal rate of increase in the rate of decrease of the expansion of the trend toward reduction of increasing berp-nut consumption among unwed fathers ages nine through ninety on backward worlds of the Nicodeman group, a development which I just detected this morning through the use of refined psychostatistical techniques."

"Good lord, Chester"-a political forecast specialist picked up the cue-"what will be the projected impact of this downturn in the upturn?"

"Upturn of the downturn, if you must use layman's language," Chester corrected. "Why, at the present rate it appears that by fiscal ninety-seven, there'll be a record high in unwed fathers."

"To return to the subject at hand, gentlemen," Thunderstroke cut in ominously, "both parties to the dispute have dispatched battle fleets to stand by off Yudore, primed for action."

"Hmm. Seems to me there's a solution of sorts implicit in that datum," someone murmured.

"Let us hope not! An outbreak of hostilities in the Sector would blot our copybooks badly, gentlemen!" Thunderstroke glared at the offender. "Unfortunately, the Groaci Amba.s.sador has a.s.sured me privately," he continued grimly, "that his government's position is unalterable. Groaci doctrine, as he explained matters, makes accommodation with what he terms 'vile-smelling opportunists' impossible, while a spokesman for the Slox has announced they refuse to yield an inch to the, ahem, 'five-eyed sticky-fingers,' as he refers to the opposition party."

"It sounds like a major policy blunder on the part of the Groaci," Magnan observed contentedly. "How refreshing that for once the CDT is not involved."

"We could hardly be said to be uninvolved, Mr. Magnan," Thunderstroke pointed out sternly, "if we undertake to mediate the dispute."

"No, I suppose not-but why be pessimistic? Who would be idiot enough to suggest poking our nose in that bag of Annelids?"

"As it happens," Thunderstroke said in a voice like an iceberg sliding into an Arctic sea, "I did!"

"You, sir?" Magnan croaked. "Why, what a splendid notion-now that I've had time to consider it in depth, I mean."

"After all, our function as diplomats is to maintain interplanetary tensions at a level short of violence," a fragile-looking acting Section Chief sprang to the Undersecretary's support.

"Would you want to make that 'reduce tensions,' Chester?" the Information Agency representative inquired, pencil poised, "Just in case you're quoted out of context."

"No reporters," Thunderstroke decreed. "I shudder to think what critics of the Corps might make of any little slip on our part in this affair."

"I suppose you'll be sending along a hundred-man Conciliation Team with a squadron of Peace Enforcers to deal with the matter," Magnan said, a speculative look on his narrow features.

"Hardly," Thunderstroke said flatly. "This is a job for finesse, not brute diplomacy. In a situation of this nature, a single shrewd, intrepid, coolly efficient negotiator is the logical choice."