Raatiil sounded altogether sincere. If it was, there went any chance of even thinking about raising rebellions in the subject species. Johnson had always figured that chance was pretty slim. The Lizards had held the Empire together for a long time.
Jonathan Yeager asked, “What did your people used to reverence before the Race came to your planet?”
Raatiil opened and closed both hands. That must have been the Rabotev’s equivalent of a shrug, for the alien answered, “These days, only scholars know. What difference does it make? Those other things could not have been as strong as the spirits of Emperors past, or we would have learned to fly between the stars and brought the Race into our empire instead of the other way round.”
Was that what the Lizards had been teaching ever since they conquered what humans called Epsilon Eridani 2? Or had the Rabotevs come up with it themselves, to explain why they’d lost and the Lizards had won? After all these thousands of years, did anyone still remember how the story had got started?
“May I ask a question without causing offense?” Sam Yeager said. “As I told you, I am ignorant of your kind.”
Raatiil made the affirmative gesture. With the Rabotev’s two-thumbed hand, it looked odd, but it was understandable. “Ask,” the shuttlecraft pilot said.
“I thank you,” Yeager replied. “Are you male or female?”
“They predicted you would ask me this,” Raatiil said. “As it happens, I am a male. The sand in which my egg was incubated was warm. But, except during mating season, it matters not at all to us. I am told it is different with you Tosevites, and I see this is so.”
In English, Johnson said, “They’ve been studying up on us.”
“Well, good,” Jonathan Yeager replied in the same language. “I hope that means they take us seriously.”
“Oh, they take us seriously, all right,” Sam Yeager said. “We’re here, so they have to take us seriously. Whether we can get anywhere when we talk to them-well, that’s liable to be a different story.”
The Rabotev’s eyestalks kept swinging toward whoever was talking. Does he understand English? Johnson wondered. Or is he just surprised to hear any language that isn’t the Race‘s? The Race was nothing if not thoroughgoing. Signals from Earth had been coming Home for almost eighty years now. Could the Lizards have taught some of the folk of the Empire the human tongue? No doubt about it.
Easiest way to find out might be to grab the bull by the horns. “Do you speak English, Shuttlecraft Pilot?” Johnson asked, in that language.
Raatiil froze for a moment. Surprise? Evidently, for after that freeze he made the affirmative gesture again. “I have learned it,” he answered, also in English. “Do you understand when I speak?”
“Yes. You speak well,” Johnson said. That Raatiil could be understood at all meant he spoke well, but Johnson had known plenty of Lizards who were worse. Still in an experimental mood, he told that to the Rabotev.
He got back another shrug-equivalent. “Some males and females are better than others at learning strange things,” Raatiil said.
So much for that, Johnson thought. He’d been curious to see whether Raatiil enjoyed getting praise for doing something better than members of the Race. If he did, he didn’t show it. Maybe that meant there really wasn’t any friction among the different species in the Empire. Maybe it only meant Raatiil was too well trained to show much.
Sam Yeager caught Johnson’s eye and nodded slightly. Johnson nodded back. Sure as hell, Sam had known what he was up to. No flies on him, no indeed. Everybody on the ship had been gloomy because the Doctor didn’t make it. Johnson was sorry they couldn’t revive the Doctor, too. He didn’t think the diplomacy would suffer on that account, though. It might even go better. The Doctor was clever, but he’d always liked to show off just how clever he was. Sam Yeager was more likely to do what needed doing and not make any kind of fuss about it.
Raatiil said, “Those Tosevites going down to the surface of Home, please accompany me to the shuttlecraft. It has been fitted with pads that will accommodate your physiques.”
One by one, the humans boarded the shuttlecraft. Sam Yeager was the last. “Wish us luck,” he told Johnson.
“Break a leg,” Johnson said solemnly. Yeager grinned and pushed himself into the air lock.
Johnson closed the inner door. Yeager went through the outer door and into the shuttlecraft. Johnson pressed the button that closed the outer door. He waited by the air lock to make sure the shuttlecraft’s docking collar disengaged as smoothly as it had caught. It did. He headed back to the control room. From now on, most of the action would be down on the planet.
Deceleration pressed Jonathan Yeager into the foam pad that did duty for a seat on the Lizards’ shuttlecraft. Rationally, he knew it wasn’t that bad, but it felt as if he were at the bottom of a pileup on a football field.
He looked over his shoulder at his father, who was older and had been weightless longer. “How you doing, Dad?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine as soon as they take the locomotive off my chest,” Sam Yeager answered.
“Landing soon,” Raatiil said-in English. He’d never seen a human before in his life, but he spoke fairly well. Would he have admitted it if the pilot hadn’t asked? There was an interesting question.
The shuttlecraft touched down. The landing jets fell silent. It was already hot inside the craft. The Lizards liked it that way; they were comfortable at temperatures like those of a hot summer day in Los Angeles. They found Arabia and the Sahara delightful. They also found them temperate, an alarming thought. Jonathan asked, “What season of the year is it here?”
“Spring,” Raatiil answered. “But do not worry. It will be warmer soon.” That spoke volumes about the kind of weather Rabotevs preferred.
It also drew several involuntary groans from the humans on the shuttlecraft. Karen Yeager said, “Our world is cooler than Home. I hope you will arrange to cool our quarters.”
“I do not know anything about this,” Raatiil said. “Now that you remind me, I remember in my briefing that Tosevites prefer weather we would find unpleasantly cold. But I have no control over your quarters.”
It’s not my job. That was what he meant, all right. Some things didn’t change across species lines. Jonathan had seen that back on Earth with the Lizards. It obviously applied here, too. Then Raatiil opened the hatchway, and Jonathan forgot about everything but that he’d momentarily be stepping out onto the ground of a planet that spun round another sun.
“You Tosevites may go down,” Raatiil said. “The descent ladder is deployed. Go with some caution, if you please. The ladder is not made for your species.”
“Many of us have flown in the Race’s shuttlecraft on Tosev 3,” Jonathan said. “We know these ladders.”
The air inside the shuttlecraft had had the same sterile feel to it as it did aboard human spacecraft. It had smelled very faintly of lubricants and other less decipherable things. Now Jonathan got a whiff of dust and spicy scents that could only have come from plants of some sort. That was a world out there waiting for him, not the inside of a spacecraft.
For a moment, none of the half dozen humans moved. Raatiil’s eye-stalks swung from one to the other. He plainly wondered why they held back. Then Karen reached out and touched Jonathan’s father on the shoulder. “Go ahead,” she told him. “You’ve got the right. You’ve been dealing with the Race longer than anybody.”