The image rippled, then cleared.
"Agreed," said Louis. He was a bit disappointed in the simplicity of the game.
"We shall both accelerate away from the artifact. Will you follow me down?"
"I will," said Louis.
The image disappeared.
III
Louis Wu scratched at a week's growth of beard. What a way to greet an alien ambassador! In the worlds of men Louis Wu dressed impeccably; but out here he felt free to look like death warmed over, all the time.
But how was a Trinoc supposed to know that he should have shaved? No, that wasn't the problem.
Was he fool or genius?
He had friends, many of them, with habits like his own. Two had disappeared decades ago; he no longer remembered their names. He remembered only that each had gone hunting stasis boxes in this direction and that each had neglected to come back.
Had they met alien ships?
There were any number of other explanations. Half a year or more spent alone in a single ship was a good way to find out whether you liked yourself. If you decided you didn't, there was no point in returning to the worlds of men.
But there were aliens out here. Armed. One rested in orbit five hundred miles ahead of his ship, with a valuable artifact halfway between.
Still, gambling was safer than fighting. Louis Wu waited for the alien's next move.
That move was to drop like a rock. The alien ship must have used at least twenty gees of push. After a moment of shock, Louis followed under the same acceleration, protected by his cabin gravity. Was the alien testing his maneuverability?
Possibly not. He seemed contemptuous of tricks. Louis, trailing the alien at a goodly distance, was now much closer to the silver sphere. Suppose he just turned ship, ran for the artifact, strapped it to his hull and kept running?
Actually, that wouldn't work. He'd have to slow to reach the spere the alien wouldn't have to slow to attack. Twenty gees was close to his ship's limit.
Running might not be a bad idea, though. What guarantee had he of the alien's good faith? What if the alien "cheated"?
That risk could be minimized. His pressure suit had sensors to monitor his body functions. Louis set the autopilot to blow the fusion plant if his heart stopped. He rigged a signal button on his suit to blow the plant manually.
The alien ship burned bright orange as it hit air. It fell free and then slowed suddenly, a mile over the ocean. "Showoff," Louis muttered and prepared to imitate the maneuver.
The conical ship showed no exhaust. Its drive must be either a reactionless drive, like his own, or a kzin-style induced-gravity drive. Both were neat and clean, silent, safe to bystanders and highly advanced.
Islands were scattered across the ocean. The alien circled, chose one at seeming random and landed like a feather along a bare shoreline.
Louis followed him down. There was a bad moment while he waited for some unimaginable weapon to fire from the grounded ship, to tear him flaming from the sky while his attention was distracted by landing Procedures. But he landed without a jar, several hundred yards from the alien cone.
"An explosion will destroy both our ships if I am harmed," he told the alien via signal beam.
"Our species seem to think alike. I will now descend."
Louis watched him appear near the nose of the ship, in a wide circular airlock. He watched the alien drift gently to the sand. Then he clamped his helmet down and entered the airlock.
Had he made the right decision?
Gambling was safer than war. More fun, too. Best of all, it gave him better odds.
"But I'd hate to go home without that box," he thought. In nearly two hundred years of life, he had never done anything as important as finding a stasis box. He had made no discoveries, won no elective offices, overthrown no governments. This was his big chance.
"Even odds," he said, and turned on the intercom as he descended.
His muscles and semicircular canals registered about a gee. A hundred feet away waves slid hissing up onto pure white sand. The waves were green and huge, perfect for riding; the beach a definite beer party beach.
Later, perhaps he would ride those waves to shore on his belly, if the air checked out and the water was free of predators. He hadn't had time to give the planet a thorough checkup.
Sand tugged at his boots as he went to meet the alien.
The alien was five feet tall. He had looked much taller descending from his ship, but that was because he was mostly leg. More than three feet of skinny leg, a torso like a beer barrel, and no neck. Impossible that his neckless neck should be so supple. But the chrome yellow skin fell in thick rolls around the bottom of his head, hiding anatomical details.
His suit was transparent, a roughly alien-shaped balloon, constricted at the shoulder, above and below the complicated elbow joint, at the wrist, at hip and knee. Air jets showed at wrist and ankle. Tools hung in loops at the chest. A back pack hung from the neck, under the suit. Louis noted all these tools with trepidation; any one of them could be a weapon.
"I expected that you would be taller," said the alien.
"A laser screen doesn't tell much, does it? I think my translator may have mixed up right and left, too. Do you have the coin?"
"The screee?" The alien produced it.
"Shall there be no preliminary talk? My name is screee."
"My machine can't translate that. Or pronouce it. My name is Louis. Has your species met others besides mine?"
"Yes, two. But I am not an expert in that field of knowledge."
"Nor am I. Let's leave the politenesses to the experts. We're here to gamble."
"Choose your symbol," said the alien, and handed him the coin.
Louis looked it over. It was a lens of platinum or something similar, sharp-edged, with the three-clawed hand of his new gambling partner stamped on one side and a planet, with heavy ice caps outlined, decorating the other. Maybe they weren't ice caps, but continents.
He held the coin as if trying to choose. Stalling. Those gas jets seemed to be attitude jets, but maybe not. Suppose he won? Would he win only the chance to be murdered?
But they'd both die if his heart stopped. No alien could have guessed what kind of weapon would render him helpless without killing him.
"I choose the planet. You flip first."
The alien tossed the coin in the direction of Louis's ship. Louis' eyes followed it down, and he took two steps to retrieve it. The alien stood beside him when he rose.
"Hand," he said.
"My turn." He was one down. He tossed the coin. As it spun gleaming, he saw for the first time that the alien ship was gone.
"What gives?" he demanded.
"There's no need for us to die," said the alien. It held something that had hung in a loop from its chest.
"This is a weapon, but both will die if I use it. Please do not try to reach your ship."
Louis touched the button that would blow his power plant.
"My ship lifted when you turned your head to follow the screee. By now my ship is beyond range of any possible explosion you can bring to bear. There is no need for us to die, provided you do not try to reach your ship."
"Wrong. I can leave your ship without a pilot." He left his hand where it was. Rather than be cheated by an alien in a gambling game--
"The pilot is still on board, with the astrogator and the screee. I am only the communications officer. Why did you assume I was alone?"
Louis sighed and let his arm fall. "Because I'm stupid," he said bitterly. "Because you used the singular pronoun, or my computer did. Because I thought you were a gambler."