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“I don’t know of any laws I’ve broken, nor bent unrepairably far out of shape.”
    “Don’t be too cocksure about that,” she warned.
    “Hm? Maybe we’d better run through the story from the beginning, and see if you can point out where I went illegal. Otherwise, relax and enjoy.”
    Brodersen took a breath before he continued: “I thought, and mentioned to miscellaneous people, that
Emissary
might come back early. Few paid me much heed. Yes, as you’ve guessed, I did sponsor that robot observer the Foundation sent to study the T Machine—but it was mainly doing legitimate scientific work, and I’ve yet to get a satisfactory explanation of why it was required to take up such a distant orbit.
    “Hold, if you will. Let me rant for a minute longer.” Though his eyelids crinkled, belying the imperious note, his voice tramped on. “Space regs don’t demand that research plans be explained in detail. And what harm in keeping a lens cocked for
Poul Anderson
    Emissary,
anyway? You accuse me of deception? Blazes, Aurie, ’twas the other way around!
    “Just the same, after a few months the observer did return, and beamed a message to the station it was supposed to, under certain circumstances. I called you and asked—sort of tactfully, I think—if you knew anything about the matter. You said no. I checked with Earth, and everybody I contacted there said no too. Now I’d hate to call them all liars. Especially you, Aurie. Nevertheless, today you invited me down for a confidential discussion, which seems to be about gagging me.”
    She straightened in her chair, gripped her desktop, and defied him: “You were jumping to conclusions from the start. Absurd conclusions.”
    “Must I run barefoot through the cowbarn for you?” His note of patience was not spontaneous; he had planned his tactics en route to this house. “Directly or indirectly, you’ve got to have heard my reasoning before. But okay, here ’tis again.”
    She pulled smoke into her lungs and waited. He thought fleetingly how much human discourse was like this, barren repetition if not mere tom-tom beat, and wondered if the Others were free of the necessity, if they could speak straight to a meaningful point.
    “The robot spotted a
Reina-class
transport popping out of a gate,” he said. “Sure, it was too far off to identify the ship, but we humans have built nothing bigger and the shape was right. Either that was a
Reina
or it was a nonhuman vessel of the same general kind. The robot then tracked
Faraday
closing in on the newcomer, and then tracked them both as they followed the Phoebus-to-Sol guidepath. That was enough for its program to decide it should come home and report.
    “Still, Aurie, I didn’t swan-dive whooping off the deep end. I began by having my agents on Earth learn exactly where every other
Reina
was at that time. It turned out none of them could’ve been what my observer saw; we were accounted for, in the Solar System or this one.
    “Meanwhile
Faraday
returned to Phoebus and resumed her duties. I had a Foundation director beam Captain Archer a polite inquiry as to what had happened. He answered that there had been nothing unusual, a freighter had developed some trouble in transit from Sol and he escorted her back as a precaution, and no, she was not a
Reina
but a
Princesa
and if ourrobot claimed otherwise, we’d better have its instruments overhauled.
    “Now look, Aurie, I know that observer is in perfect shape. So what the devil do you want me to think? Either that was a nonhuman ship, or she was
Emissary,
which I imagine you’ll agree is more likely by a whisker or three. Whichever, ’tis the biggest story since…take your choice…and nobody in authority has a bloody damn thing to say about it!”
    Brodersen leaned forward. His pipestem jabbed the air. “I give you, probably most of those I’ve queried, or my agents have, are honest,” he said. “They really had no information. In a couple of cases they took the