“Harrison!” he yelled.

With a puzzled expression, Harrison went inside. Captain Grayder was there, seated behind a desk and gazing moodily at a list lying before him. Colonel Shelton was stiff and erect to one side, with Major Hame slightly behind him. Both wore the pained expressions of those tolerating a bad smell while the plumber goes looking for the leak.

His Excellency was tramping steadily to and fro in front of the desk, muttering deep down in his chins. “Barely five days and already the rot has set in.” He turned as Harrison entered, fired off sharply, “So it’s you, mister. When did you return from leave?”

“The evening before last, sir.”

“Ahead of time, eh? That’s curious. Did you get a puncture or something?”

“No, sir. I didn’t take my bicycle with me.”

“Just as well,” approved the ambassador. “If you had done so, you’d have been a thousand miles away by now and still pushing hard.”

“Why, sir?”

“Why? He asks me why! That’s precisely what I’d like to know-why?” He fumed a bit, then inquired, “Did you visit this town by yourself, or in company?”

“I went with Sergeant Gleed, sir.”

“Call him,” ordered the ambassador, looking at Morgan.

Opening the door, Morgan obediently shouted, “Gleed! Gleed!” No answer.

He tried again, without result. They put it over the caller-system again. Sergeant Gleed refused to be among those present.

“Has he booked in?”

Grayder consulted his list, “In early. Twenty-four hours ahead of time. He may have sneaked out again with the second liberty quota this morning and omitted to book it. That’s a double crime.”

“If he’s not on the ship, he’s off the ship, crime or no crime.”

“Yes, your excellency.” Captain Grayder registered slight weariness.

“GLEED!” howled Morgan, outside the door. A moment later he poked his head inside, said, “Your excellency, one of the men says Sergeant Gleed is not on board because he saw him in town quite recently.”

“Send him in.” The ambassador made an impatient gesture at Harrison. “Stay where you are and keep those confounded ears from flapping. I’ve not finished with you yet.”

A long, gangling grease-monkey came in, blinked around, a little awed by high brass.

“What do you know about Sergeant Gleed?” demanded the ambassador.

The other licked his lips, seemed sorry that he had mentioned the missing man. “It’s like this, your honor, I—”

“Call me ‘sir.’ ”

“Yes, sir.” More disconcerted blinking. “I went out with the second party early this morning, came back a couple of hours ago because my stomach was acting up. On the way, I saw Sergeant Gleed and spoke to him.”

“Where? When?”

“In town, sir. He was sitting in one of those big long-distance coaches. I thought it a bit queer.”

“Get down to the roots, man! What did he tell you, if anything?”

“Not much, sir. He seemed pretty chipper about something. Mentioned a young widow struggling to look after two hundred acres. Someone had told him about her and he thought he’d take a peek.” He hesitated, backed away a couple of paces, added, “He also said I’d see him in irons or never.”

“One of your men,” said the ambassador to Colonel Shelton. “A trooper, allegedly well-disciplined. One with long service, three stripes, and a pension to lose.” His attention returned to the informant “Did he say exactly where he was going?”

“No, sir. I asked him, but he just grinned and said, ‘Myob!’ So I came back to the ship.”

“All right. You may go.” His Excellency watched the other depart then continued with Harrison. “You were with that first quota.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me tell you something, mister. Four hundred twenty men went out. Only two hundred have returned. Forty of those were in various stages of alcoholic turpitude. Ten of them are in the clink yelling, ‘I won’t!’ in steady chorus. Doubtless they’ll go on yelling until they’ve sobered up.”

He stared at Harrison as if that worthy were personally responsible, then went on, “There’s something paradoxical about this. I can understand the drunks. There are always a few individuals who blow their tops first day on land. But of the two hundred who have condescended to come back, about half returned before time, the same as you did. Their reasons were identical—the town was unfriendly, everyone treated them like ghosts until they’d had enough.”

Harrison made no comment.

“So we have two diametrically opposed reactions,” the ambassador complained. “One gang of men say the place stinks so much that they’d rather be back on the ship. Another gang finds it so hospitable that either they get filled to the gills on some stuff called double dith, or they stay sober and desert the service. I want an explanation. There’s got to be one somewhere. You’ve been twice in this town. What can you tell us?”

Carefully, Harrison said, “It all depends on whether or not you’re spotted as a Terran. Also on whether you meet Gands who’d rather convert you than give you the brush-off.” He pondered a moment, finished, “Uniforms are a giveaway.”

“You mean they’re allergic to uniforms?”

“More or less, sir.”

“Any idea why?”

“Couldn’t say for certain, sir. I don’t know enough about them yet. As a guess, I think they may have been taught to associate uniforms with the Terran regime from which their ancestors escaped.”

“Escaped nothing!” scoffed the ambassador. “They grabbed the benefit of Terran inventions, Terran techniques and Terran manufacturing ability to go someplace where they’d have more elbow room.” He gave Harrison the sour eye. “Don’t any of them wear uniforms?”

“Not that I could recognize as such. They seem to take pleasure in expressing their individual personalities by wearing anything they fancy, from pigtails to pink boots. Oddity in attire is the norm among the Gands. Uniformity is the real oddity—they think it’s submissive and degrading.”

“You refer to them as Gands. Where did they dig up that name?” Harrison told him, thinking back to Elissa as she explained it. In his mind’s eye be could see her now. And Seth’s place with the tables set and steam rising behind the counter and mouth-watering smells oozing from the background. Now that he came to visualize the scene again, it appeared to embody an elusive but essential something that the ship had never possessed.

“And this person,” he concluded, “invented what they call The Weapon.”

“Hm-m-m! And they assert he was a Terran? What does he look like? Did you see a photograph or a statue?”

“They don’t erect statues, sir. They say no person is more important than another.”

“Bunkum!” snapped the ambassador, instinctively rejecting that viewpoint. “Did it occur to you to ask at what period in history this wonderful weapon was tried out?”

“No, sir,” Harrison confessed. “I didn’t think it important”

“You wouldn’t. Some of you men are too slow to catch a Callis-trian sloth wandering in its sleep. I don’t criticize your abilities as spacemen, but as intelligence-agents you’re a dead loss.”