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Fighting Rowboat could speak up.
"We want to stay independent," said Miles, "and much of what you could give us might not be good for
that independence. But there are a few things. . . . Now that we've been brought together aboard the
Fighting Rowboat, we'd like our races to stay in touch. So give us ships then, or show us how to build
our own ships, so that our twenty-three different races can communicate and travel among our separate
worlds."
"The ships and the knowledge you ask for are yours," said the Center Alien. He hesitated. "And if in the
future you should want more than this from us, we will arrange a method of communication so that you
need only ask."
"Thanks," said Miles. "But I don't think we'll be asking."
17
The summer sun of a later year was sinking toward the hours of late afternoon above the high banks of
the Mississippi River by the University of Minnesota campus when the envoy from that race called (by
themselves) theRahsesh alighted from a government car at the edge of a road on the west bank of the
river. Before the envoy, humans in plain clothes guarded a small section of green lawn that run outward a
short distance to the edge of a bluff. Recognized by the guards, in his personal and diplomatic capacities,
the alien envoy was admitted through their lines. He went alone across the grass to where a man stood
with his back turned, painting on a large canvas set up on a heavy easel. A brown-haired girl sat quietly in
a camp chair near him, reading.
The painter was in light slacks and white shirt with sleeves rolled up. Smears of gray, blue, and yellow
paint were on his bared forearms, on his hands and fingers, and the canvas before him was heavy with
wet paint of many colors. The envoy from theRahsesh went swiftly, smoothly, and quietly up to stand at
his elbow.
"Am I interrupting you, friend Miles?" he asked the painter.
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"No," Miles shook his head without looking around. "I'm all done, Luhon. I'm just putting a little polish
on a last few sections. You've met my wife, Marie?"
She raised her head to smile at Luhon before returning to her book.
"No. I'm honored to meet her," said Luhon. "Continue with your occupation, friend Miles, I can wait."
"No, go ahead. Talk." said Miles, still without turning. "Do you know you're the first one in? None of the
rest of our old crew from theFighting Rowboat has got to Earth yet."
"They'll be along shortly, I'd guess," said Luhon. "Did each of the races pick its former representative to
be its envoy? It occurred to me that there might be races which might want to send someone else."
"Not for this meeting," said Miles. His brush point placed yellow color lightly on the canvas. "Each of our
twenty-three races needs all the understanding it can get about the others, and that sort of understanding
is possible only through someone who already knows the rest of us. In fact, I said as much in the
message I sent around to the other races. You must have noticed my recommendation to that effect in the
letter I sent theRahsesh ."
"I noticed," replied Luhon, gazing at the canvas with some small interest and curiosity. "But it occurred to
me that perhaps the recommendation was special in my case."
"No," said Miles.
For a few seconds neither one said anything. Miles worked away at his painting.
"You know, friend Miles," said Luhon thoughtfully, "when the Center Aliens asked you, after the battle
with the Silver Horde, what we all wanted in the way of reward, you answered him without talking it over
with the rest of us first."
"That's right," answered Miles, painting.
"And now," murmured Luhon, "here you've called a meeting of all of us on your world, speaking for all
our races again all on your own. Also, that notice you sent around, friend Miles, didn't say especially
what we all were getting together to discuss."
"It said," said Miles, "that what we were going to discuss would at first be understandable only to those
who, like we twenty-three, had had experience with the Center Aliens and the Silver Horde."
"True," said Luhon, "and that was enough to satisfy my government and, I suppose, those who govern
the other twenty-one races. But is it going to be satisfactory to the twenty-three of us, when we all come
face to face again, I ask you, friend Miles?"
"All right. You've asked me," answered Miles, and paused to squint at the descending sun sending its
rays slanting now across university buildings, trees, river bluffs, and river the entire scene of Miles'
painting. "And you've made a point of coming early, to be sure that you'd be the first to ask me."
"I was your second-in-command," Luhon reminded him mildly.
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