“Table,” he said, and a long, rectangular table rose out of the floor.
“Chairs,” he said, and chairs rose to line the table.
“This is normally the ship’s conference room,” he explained, striding to the head of the table. “Please, take a seat.”
The Lambchops and Huskers all sat on one side of the table. As they sat, the chairs shaped themselves to fit their anatomies.
“Now,” Clicksquawksqueal said, “perhaps you can explain what we’re doing here.”
“Not just yet,” Carter said. “Let’s wait for the other delegations to arrive.”
“You’re pretty confident they’re coming,” said Gordon, who’d taken a seat next to the ship’s officer.
“It’s my winning personality,” Carter said. “It’s irresistible.”
Sure enough, a minute later the Gaspassers came into the room, trailed by the Mutts. They took seats facing the Lambchops and Huskers.
“Thank you for coming, gentle creatures,” Carter said. “In the interests of universal harmony, it is truly an honor to welcome you to this historic meeting aboard…”
“Get on with it,” a Mutt that looked like a border collie snapped, “I’ve got a full house waiting back at the game.”
“Yes,” said one of the Lambchops, “you said you had something to reveal about the death of one of the Unknown 37 diplomats. Let’s not spend more time than we have to in such odiferous surroundings.”
“Who you calling odiferous, you cotton-covered assassin?” the collie barked.
This started all the Lambchops and Mutts bleating and barking. The Huskers rustled their fronds, and the Gaspassers emitted noises that indicated that they were about to become airborne.
“Oh, great,” Gordon said to Carter, “you’re starting a riot. Well, why not? They can’t drum me out of the Corps Diplomatique twice.”
“Silence,” the ship’s officer thundered, his voice enhanced by speakers in the exoskeleton. “I can have the walls lined with Federation Marines in a heartbeat.”
That seemed to make an impression. “Now,” Carter said, “we know that the unfortunate Clickclickwhistle left the Unknown Origin 37s’ compartment and never came back. We know that he was, what was the word, decommissioned inside diplomat country and was rolled through the hatchway into the outside hall. So we know that the culprit is a member of one of the diplomatic missions.”
“What?” the border collie snarled. “You’re accusing one of us of murder? I won’t stand for that.”
“If you don’t calm down,” Carter said, “I’ll send for a rolled-up newspaper. Now, before we go any further, perhaps the leader of the other Unknown Origin delegation can explain why one of its members is missing.”
That caused a flap among the Gaspassers, who chirped and whistled at one another, then at Carter.
“Missing? No one is missing from our delegation,” one of the Gaspassers said.
“Now, now,” Carter said. “Do you take us for chumps? Computer, how many of this species came aboard?”
“Twelve, just like all the other delegations,” the computer drawled.
“And how many do you count now?”
“Eleven.”
The heads of the Gaspassers all bobbed as they tried to count each other. The other delegates seemed to be trying to count them, too.
“Do you mean to say,” Clicksquawksqueal said, “that one of that species was involved in the decommissioning of Clickclickwhistle?”
“What sort of a charge is that, you overgrown bush?” the border collie howled.
“Who are you calling names, bitch?” the head Lambchop bleated.
In the next instant, all of the Lambchops and Mutts were standing in their chairs snarling and snapping. The Huskers were standing and shaking their fronds at the Gaspassers, who in unison emitted loud noises and rose into the air. Clicksquawksqueal slammed a frond down on the table.
And it cut right through the tabletop.
“George W. Bush!” Gordon shouted, “that tabletop is high-density alloy.”
The Gaspassers shot across the table at the Huskers. One pair of their appendages was moving so fast they looked like circular saws.
“Tanglefoot!” yelled Carter, and every alien froze in place.
“That’s a neat trick,” the young diplomat said. “How’d you do that?
The ship’s officer smiled. “Oh, just a precaution,” he said. “When I went to get this exoskeleton, I took the opportunity to ask engineering to modify a couple of stasis fields so they’d work on the Xtees. Later, I got on the communicator concealed in here”-he waved his left power arm-“and ordered the stasis projectors installed in the floor of the deck above us. The computer is controlling them.”
“Well, I hope you know that subjecting diplomats to stasis without their consent is a violation of several all-creature protocols,” Gordon said. “Not that it matters to me. I’ve lost not one but two alien diplomats. My career is over.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Carter said. “Computer, why don’t you release oh, say, the border collie-looking Mutt and the Lambchop with the biggest mouth.”
The aliens came out of stasis yelling at one another, but when they saw what had happened to their colleagues, they stopped.
“You can’t do this to us,” the Lambchop said. “When we report this to your Corps Diplomatique, both of you will regret it.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” the ship’s officer said. “I just thawed you two to see if you want to come clean.”
The Mutt and the Lambchop looked at one another, then back at Carter. Neither made a sound.
“No?” Carter said. “Then why don’t you two sit quietly while I explain what happened to my young friend here? Now, then, Probationary Intern to the second assistant undersecretary Oscar Gordon, let’s pretend. Say you’re a species in toward the core of the universe, and you’re engaged in an all-planets donnybrook with another species in your neck of the stars. Let’s call you, oh, I don’t know, Lambchops, and your opponents Mutts.”
“You and your opponents are pretty evenly matched, and each of you is always looking for an advantage. That includes sending out long-range teams, searching for new military technologies.
“Within a few years of each other, you both encounter the Federation of Planets. They won’t sell you weapons, but you figure if you get to know your way around, you’ll find some member species that will. So you send out spies disguised as diplomats, traders, what have you.
“Then you get word from your spies that there’s going to be a big meeting. You hear your opponents will be there, too. One of the items on the agenda will be the little tiff you’re having. You know it will take some time to make arrangements for the meeting that are satisfactory to diplomats representing more than five hundred species. And it’s taken, what, forty years to make the arrangements and get everybody together?
“So you could use two things. Allies. And, in case things don’t go your way, weapons. You know the Federation forces won’t let you bring weapons to the conference, at least not anything they recognize as weapons.
“But you’ve got an edge. You use mechanical weapons in your fight with the Mutts, but you also use biological weapons. And you figure that you might be able to get some of those weapons past by having them posing as diplomats from a new species.”
“How am I doing so far?” Carter asked the Lambchop.
“Eat dirt, you bald ape,” the Lambchop replied.
“I must be pretty close,” Carter said. “So you need something a little more sophisticated, and, just as important, something your opponents have never seen before. So you modify some plant life you found somewhere and, voilà, you have the Unknown Origin 37s, also known as the Huskers.”
With a snarl, the Lambchop leaped toward Carter. It hit the intervening stasis field and was knocked to the floor.
“You mean, Clickclickwhistle wasn’t an alien diplomat, it was a weapons system?” the young diplomat asked. “How did you figure that out?”