CHAPTER I

They started giving me the business as soon as I came through the door

into the Secretary's outer office.

There was Ethel K'wang-Li, the Secretary's receptionist, at her desk.

There was Courtlant Staynes, the assistant secretary to the

Undersecretary for Economic Penetration, and Norman Gazarin, from

Protocol, and Toby Lawder, from Humanoid Peoples' Affairs, and Raoul

Chavier, and Hans Mannteufel, and Olga Reznik.

It was a wonder there weren't more of them watching the condemned man's

march to the gibbet: the word that the Secretary had called me in must

have gotten all over the Department since the offices had opened.

"Ah, Mr. Machiavelli, I presume," Ethel kicked off.

"Machiavelli, Junior." Olga picked up the ball. "At least, that's the

way he signs it."

"God's gift to the Consular Service, and the Consular Service's gift to

Policy Planning," Gazarin added.

"Take it easy, folks. These Hooligan Diplomats would as soon shoot you

as look at you," Mannteufel warned.

"Be sure and tell the Secretary that your friends all want important

posts in the Galactic Empire." Olga again.

"Well, I'm glad some of you could read it," I fired back. "Maybe even a

few of you understood what it was all about."

"Don't worry, Silk," Gazarin told me. "Secretary Ghopal understands what

it was all about. All too well, you'll find."

A buzzer sounded gently on Ethel K'wang-Li's desk. She snatched up the

handphone and whispered into it. A deathly silence filled the room while

she listened, whispered some more, then hung it up.

They were all staring at me.

"Secretary Ghopal is ready to see Mr. Stephen Silk," she said. "This

way, please."

As I started across the room, Staynes began drumming on the top of the

desk with his fingers, the slow reiterated rhythm to which a man marches

to a military execution.

"A cigarette?" Lawder inquired tonelessly. "A glass of rum?"

There were three men in the Secretary of State's private office. Ghopal

Singh, the Secretary, dark-faced, gray-haired, slender and elegant,

meeting me halfway to his desk. Another slender man, in black, with a

silver-threaded, black neck-scarf: Rudolf Klüng, the Secretary of the

Department of Aggression.

And a huge, gross-bodied man with a fat baby-face and opaque black eyes.

When I saw him, I really began to get frightened.

The fat man was Natalenko, the Security Coördinator.

"Good morning, Mister Silk," Secretary Ghopal greeted me, his hand

extended. "Gentlemen, Mr. Stephen Silk, about whom we were speaking.

This way, Mr. Silk, if you please."

There was a low coffee-table at the rear of the office, and four easy

chairs around it. On the round brass table-top were cups and saucers, a

coffee urn, cigarettes--and a copy of the current issue of the _Galactic

Statesmen's Journal_, open at an article entitled _Probable Future

Courses of Solar League Diplomacy_, by somebody who had signed himself

Machiavelli, Jr.

I was beginning to wish that the pseudonymous Machiavelli, Jr. had never

been born, or, at least, had stayed on Theta Virgo IV and been a

wineberry planter as his father had wanted him to be.

As I sat down and accepted a cup of coffee, I avoided looking at the

periodical. They were probably going to hang it around my neck before

they shoved me out of the airlock.

"Mr. Silk is, as you know, in our Consular Service," Ghopal was saying

to the others. "Back on Luna on rotation, doing something in Mr.

Halvord's section. He is the gentleman who did such a splendid job for

us on Assha--Gamma Norma III.

"And, as he has just demonstrated," he added, gesturing toward the

_Statesman's Journal_ on the Benares-work table, "he is a student both

of the diplomacy of the past and the implications of our present

policies."

"A bit frank," Klüng commented dubiously.

"But judicious," Natalenko squeaked, in the high eunuchoid voice that

came so incongruously from his bulk. "He aired his singularly accurate

predictions in a periodical that doesn't have a circulation of more than

a thousand copies outside his own department. And I don't think the

public's semantic reactions to the terminology of imperialism is as bad

as you imagine. They seem quite satisfied, now, with the change in the

title of your department, from Defense to Aggression."

"Well, we've gone into that, gentlemen," Ghopal said. "If the article

really makes trouble for us, we can always disavow it. There's no

censorship of the _Journal_. And Mr. Silk won't be around to draw fire

on us."

_Here it comes_, I thought.

"That sounds pretty ominous, doesn't it, Mr. Silk?" Natalenko tittered

happily, like a ten-year-old who has just found a new beetle to pull the

legs out of.

"It's really not as bad as it sounds, Mr. Silk," Ghopal hastened to

reassure me. "We are going to have to banish you for a while, but I

daresay that won't be so bad. The social life here on Luna has probably

begun to pall, anyhow. So we're sending you to Capella IV."

"Capella IV," I repeated, trying to remember something about it. Capella

was a GO-type, like Sol; that wouldn't be so bad.

"New Texas," Klüng helped me out.

_Oh, God, no!_ I thought.

"It happens that we need somebody of your sort on that planet, Mr.

Silk," Ghopal said. "Some of the trouble is in my department and some of

it is in Mr. Klüng's; for that reason, perhaps it would be better if

Coördinator Natalenko explained it to you."

"You know, I assume, our chief interest in New Texas?" Natalenko asked.

"I had some of it for breakfast, sir," I replied. "Supercow."

Natalenko tittered again. "Yes, New Texas is the butcher shop of the

galaxy. In more ways than one, I'm afraid you'll find. They just

butchered one of our people there a short while ago. Our Ambassador, in

fact."

That would be Silas Cumshaw, and this was the first I'd heard about it.

I asked when it had happened.

"A couple of months ago. We just heard about it last evening, when the

news came in on a freighter from there. Which serves to point up

something you stressed in your article--the difficulties of trying to

run a centralized democratic government on a galactic scale. But we have

another interest, which may be even more urgent than our need for New

Texan meat. You've heard, of course, of the z'Srauff."

That was a statement, not a question; Natalenko wasn't trying to insult

me. I knew who the z'Srauff were; I'd run into them, here and there. One

of the extra-solar intelligent humanoid races, who seemed to have been

evolved from canine or canine-like ancestors, instead of primates. Most

of them could speak Basic English, but I never saw one who would admit

to understanding more of our language than the 850-word Basic

vocabulary. They occupied a half-dozen planets in a small star-cluster

about forty light-years beyond the Capella system. They had developed

normal-space reaction-drive ships before we came into contact with

them, and they had quickly picked up the hyperspace-drive from us back

in those days when the Solar League was still playing Missionaries of

Progress and trying to run a galaxy-wide Point-Four program.

In the past century, it had become almost impossible for anybody to get

into their star-group, although z'Srauff ships were orbiting in on every

planet that the League had settled or controlled. There were z'Srauff

traders and small merchants all over the galaxy, and you almost never

saw one of them without a camera. Their little meteor-mining boats were

everywhere, and all of them carried more of the most modern radar and

astrogational equipment than a meteor-miner's lifetime earnings would

pay for.

I also knew that they were one of the chief causes of ulcers and

premature gray hair at the League capital on Luna. I'd done a little

reading on pre-spaceflight Terran history; I had been impressed by the

parallel between the present situation and one which had culminated, two

and a half centuries before, on the morning of 7 December, 1941.

"What," Natalenko inquired, "do you think Machiavelli, Junior would do

about the z'Srauff?"

"We have a Department of Aggression," I replied. "Its mottoes are, 'Stop

trouble before it starts,' and, 'If we have to fight, let's do it on the

other fellow's real estate.' But this situation is just a little too

delicate for literal application of those principles. An unprovoked

attack on the z'Srauff would set every other non-human race in the

galaxy against us.... Would an attack by the z'Srauff on New Texas

constitute just provocation?"

"It might. New Texas is an independent planet. Its people are

descendants of emigrants from Terra who wanted to get away from the rule

of the Solar League. We've been trying for half a century to persuade

the New Texan government to join the League. We need their planet, for

both strategic and commercial reasons. With the z'Srauff for neighbors,

they need us as much at least as we need them. The problem is to make

them understand that."

I nodded again. "And an attack by the z'Srauff would do that, too, sir,"

I said.

Natalenko tittered again. "You see, gentlemen! Our Mr. Silk picks things

up very handily, doesn't he?" He turned to Secretary of State Ghopal.

"You take it from there," he invited.

Ghopal Singh smiled benignly. "Well, that's it, Stephen," he said. "We

need a man on New Texas who can get things done. Three things, to be

exact.

"First, find out why poor Mr. Cumshaw was murdered, and what can be done

about it to maintain our prestige without alienating the New Texans.

"Second, bring the government and people of New Texas to a realization

that they need the Solar League as much as we need them.

"And, third, forestall or expose the plans for the z'Srauff invasion of

New Texas."

_Is that all, now?_ I thought. _He doesn't want a diplomat; he wants a

magician._

"And what," I asked, "will my official position be on New Texas, sir? Or

will I have one, of any sort?"

"Oh, yes, indeed, Mr. Silk. Your official position will be that of

Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary. That, I believe, is

the only vacancy which exists in the Diplomatic Service on that planet."

At Dumbarton Oaks Diplomatic Academy, they haze the freshmen by making

them sit on a one-legged stool and balance a teacup and saucer on one

knee while the upper classmen pelt them with ping-pong balls. Whoever

invented that and the other similar forms of hazing was one of the great

geniuses of the Service. So I sipped my coffee, set down the cup, took a

puff from my cigarette, then said:

"I am indeed deeply honored, Mr. Secretary. I trust I needn't go into

any assurances that I will do everything possible to justify your trust

in me."

"I believe he will, Mr. Secretary," Natalenko piped, in a manner that

chilled my blood.

"Yes, I believe so," Ghopal Singh said. "Now, Mr. Ambassador, there's a

liner in orbit two thousand miles off Luna, which has been held from

blasting off for the last eight hours, waiting for you. Don't bother

packing more than a few things; you can get everything you'll need

aboard, or at New Austin, the planetary capital. We have a man whom

Coördinator Natalenko has secured for us, a native New Texan, Hoddy

Ringo by name. He'll act as your personal secretary. He's aboard the

ship now. You'll have to hurry, I'm afraid.... Well, _bon voyage_, Mr.

Ambassador."