The Star Fox

Uthg-a-K’thaq twisted his face downward as far as he could, which wasn’t much, and pointed his four chemosensor tendrils directly at Heim. In this position the third eye on top of his head was visible to the man, aft of the blowhole. But it was the front eyes, on either side of those fleshy feelers, that swiveled their gray stare against him. A grunt emerged from the lipless gape of a mouth: “So war, you say. We ’rom Naqsa know lit-tle ow war.”

Heim stepped back, for to a human nose the creature’s breath stank of swamp. Even so, he must look upward; Uthg-a-K’thaq loomed eighteen centimeters over him. He wondered fleetingly if that was why there was so much prejudice against Naqsans.

The usual explanation was their over-all appearance. Uthg-a-K’thaq suggested a dolphin, of bilious green-spotted yellow, that had turned its tail into a pair of short fluke-footed legs. Lumps projecting under the blunt head acted as shoulders for arms that were incongruously anthropoid, if you overlooked their size and the swimming-membranes that ran from elbows to pelvis. Except for a purse hung from that narrowing in the body which indicated a sort of neck, he was naked, and grossly male. It wasn’t non-humanness as such that offended men, said the psychologists, rather those aspects which were parallel but different, like a dirty joke on Homo sapiens. Smell, slobbering, belching, the sexual pattern—

But mainly they’re also space travelers, prospectors, colonizers, freight carriers, merchants, who’ve given us stiff competition, Heim thought cynically.

That had never bothered him. The Naqsans were shrewd but on the average more ethical than men. Nor did he mind their looks; indeed, they were handsome if you considered them functionally. And their private lives were their own business. The fact remained, though, most humans would resent even having a Naqsan in the same ship, let alone serving under him. And … Dave Penoyer would be a competent captain, he had made lieutenant commander before he quit the Navy, but Heim wasn’t sure he could be firm enough if trouble of that nasty sort broke out.

He dismissed worry and said, “Right. This is actually a raiding cruise. Are you still interested?”

“Yes. Hawe you worgotten that horriwle den you wound me in?”

Heim had not. Tracking rumors to their source, he had ended in a part of New York Welfare that appalled even him. A Naqsan stranded on Earth was virtually helpless. Uthg-a-K’thaq had shipped as technical adviser on a vessel from the planet that men called Caliban, whose most advanced tribe had decided to get into the space game. Entering the Solar System, the inexperienced skipper collided with an asteroid and totaled his craft. Survivors were brought to Earth by the Navy, and the Calibanites sent home; but there was no direct trade with Naqsa and, in view of the crisis in the Phoenix where his world also lay, no hurry to repatriate Uthg-a-K’thaq. Damnation, instead of fooling with those Aleriona bastards, Parliament ought to be working out a distressed-spaceman covenant.

Bluntly, Heim said, “We haven’t any way of testing your mind in depth as we can for our own sort. I’ve got to trust your promise to keep quiet. I suppose you know that if you pass this information on, you’ll probably get enough of a reward to buy a ride home.”

Uthg-a-K’thaq burbled in his blowhole. Heim wasn’t sure whether it represented laughter or indignation. “You hawe my word. Also, I am wothered awout Alerion. Good to strike at them. And, suq, will there not we loot to share?”

“Okay. You’re hereby our chief engineer.” Because the ship has got to leave soon, and you’re the only one I could get who knows how to repair a Mach Principle drive. “Now about details—”

A maid’s voice said over the intercom, which was set for one-way only: “Mail, sir.”

Heim’s heart shuddered, as it daily did. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’ll be back. Make yourself comfortable.”

Uthg-a-K’thaq hissed something and settled his glabrous bulk on the study couch. Heim jogged out.